A Special Kind Of Isolation
by Straightjacketed
Summary: Some time after Weirdmageddon, Dipper falls ill, forcing Mabel and Ford to keep him quarantined for his own safety. However, things are not as they seem: what seems to be a simple sickness might be something much worse, and medical isolation might just be a cover for something far more devastating...
1. Oubliette

A/N: To fans of "All The World's A Toybox," don't worry - I haven't quit the story, I'm just taking a quick break to force a few excess details out my brain. Suffice to say this'll be short, just a couple of chapters long at the most. Feel free to give your opinions, critiques, criticisms and corrections - especially to the typos that creep in at 1 in the morning. Anyway, on with the show - read, review and above all enjoy!

Disclaimer: Gravity Falls, not mine, keeps slipping through my fingers. 5/12/17 - made some corrections (sorry about the typos).

* * *

"Good morning, Dipper Pines. It is now 8:00 AM."

Dipper's eyes fluttered upon. "Uurgh," he yawned. "Good morning, Nurse."

"Your breakfast is ready. Should you require entertainment, episodes of __Ghost Harassers__ and __Duck-tective__ have been made available."

"Perfect. What else is on the schedule for today?"

"Your first exercise period is scheduled for 10:00 AM. Lunch is scheduled for 12:30 PM. Your medical checkup has been scheduled for 2:00 PM. Your second exercise period is-"

"I get the picture – same as yesterday. Now, has there been any news on the birthday party?"

"No data available."

"Should've guessed as much. Thanks very much, Nurse."

Yawning louder than ever, Dipper sat up in bed and surveyed the room around him. He had no idea why he bothered; after three straight days, he knew the isolation cell almost off by heart by now, and besides, it wasn't as if anything could possibly have changed in the last few hours since he'd fallen asleep. By now, he was deeply sick of the colour white: the walls were white, the ceiling was white, the floor tiles were white, the couch was white, the table and chairs were white, the bedsheets were white, the bookshelf was white, even his _ _clothes__ were white. If it hadn't been for the TV built into the wall across from the couch and the little library of mystery novels beside it, Dipper might very well have gone blind from sheer boredom. But as welcome as the books and TV were, he'd have felt much better if Mabel had been allowed to brighten the place up a little.

 _ _Can't be helped,__ he thought. __Medical isolation, remember? Besides, you'll be out in another few days.__

Lurching awkwardly out of bed, he collapsed into a chair, wearily munched his way through his cornflakes, before staggering on through his morning routine. On his way out of the bathroom, he couldn't resist checking his reflection in the mirror, hoping against hope that the mark was gone, but no: there it lay, fresh and livid as ever, an angry red triangle blistered across the nape of his neck.

He knew what it meant; he'd known what it had meant from the moment the doctors had uncovered it, even before Grunkle Ford had been called in to help out: at some point during Weirdmageddon, Bill had branded him with his mark of ownership, and now that Bill was deader than disco, the mark had taken revenge on him. As long as that ugly mass of blistered flesh was still there, he was still sick. Ford agreed and confirmed this diagnosis; for good measure, he'd carefully checked all the other participants of the Zodiac Wheel just in case they'd been marked as well, but no: Stan, Mabel, Soos, Wendy, Pacifica, Robbie, Old Man McGucket, and even Gideon had tested negative for the mark.

 _ _What makes__ me __so special, then? Why does this mark want revenge on__ me _ _more than Grunkle Stan and Ford? After all, they were the ones who killed Bill. Maybe it's something to do with the memory gun and the metal plate – maybe the tinkering with their brains immunized them. Or maybe it's the unicorn hair in the Mystery Shack, and I only got the mark because I was outside too long. Or-__

He shook his head. He could uncover this particular mystery once he was out of this cell and onto a proper trail of clues. For now, he was too tired and too sick to think of it, especially now that his head was already starting to throb again – another sign that the sickness was rumbling to life again; for now, all he could do was sit back, relax, and wait for the next round of injections. So, he shambled off to the couch, where he promptly collapsed in front of __Ghost Harassers.__

About twenty minutes later, however, Nurse paused the program. "Apologies for interrupting, Dipper Pines," the medical computer intoned. "You have a visitor."

Dipper silently punched the air. "Is it Mabel?" he asked hopefully.

"Affirmative. Subject facial scan corresponds with identity file for Mabel Pines; pupil scan confirms negative Invasive Entity presence; brain scan confirms no mental tampering. Awaiting your consent or dissent."

"Let her in, Nurse."

There was a soft clicking from somewhere behind the nearest wall, followed by a muted whirring as the airlock door slid open and shut. "Initiating diagnostics," Nurse announced. The clicking came again, as the computer processed the incoming data. "No harmful agents registered. No compromise in visitor health levels. Patient health levels sufficient to allow physical contact. Visitor may now enter: welcome, Mabel Pines."

A moment later, the wall slid apart to reveal the open airlock, and in stepped Mabel, a supernova of colour in the bland isolation cell. Maybe it was the five days spent trapped in the same boring surroundings, but her clothes seemed a thousand times brighter than usual (if that was possible): even the little rainbow-hued comet on her sweater seemed an impossible haze of colours. Immediately upon seeing him, Mabel launched herself at him with a shriek of joy, enveloping him in the biggest Sincere Sibling Hug since the end of Weirdmageddon.

"You have __no__ idea how good it is to see you, bro-bro," she said, once she was able to speak coherently again.

Dipper grinned, and then winced as Mabel's grip threatened to displace a few of his ribs. "I think I could have some idea," he said wryly. "It's good to see you too, Mabel. How are things going out there?"

"Oh, everything's been pretty quiet; even the Manotaurs are taking a break by the looks of things. Last I looked, the Mayor was asking for donations so the town could buy you a get-well hamper."

"What about Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford? What are they up to?

There was a painful note to Mabel's smile now – no surprises there: she'd been hit pretty hard when Stan had lost his memories, and next to Ford, she'd been the most driven to help him remember. "They're doing well," she said at last. "Grunkle Stan's and Soos have gotten the Mystery Shack up and running again, along with a whole new bunch of exhibits ready for the next tourist season… though yeah, Stan's still mad he didn't think of the get-well hamper donation idea first, of course. As for Ford, he's still at work on a cure – making good progress too. He says if all goes well, you'll be out of here in the next two days."

"Really?"

"Ford says it's virtually guaranteed!"

"And what about the party?"

"Ready to go the moment you're out. It's gonna be the biggest birthday party we've had in our entire lives; I think just about everyone in Gravity Falls is invited. You should see the way Pacifica's been getting things ready; I think she cracked just about three nails-"

"Wait a minute, wait a minute," Dipper interjected. " _ _Pacifica's__ been getting things ready?"

"That's right. She thinks the party could use a bit more glitz and glamour, especially after the scare over this whole isolation chamber business, so she's teamed up with me to help plan out the celebration."

"Pacifica Northwest?"

"Yep."

"As in 'blond, rich, snobbish, miles better than the rest of her family but still proud as heck' – __that__ Pacifica Northwest?"

Mabel snorted with laughter. "I think she has a crush on you, Dipper," she said, gigging impishly. "Ever since Grunkle Ford put a moratorium on visitors from outside the family, it's been nothing but 'how's Dipper?' 'is your brother doing okay?' 'when will he be out?' and my personal favourite 'do you think we'll be married in Paris or Milan?'"

"Mabel…"

"I'm serious, she's already picking out a ring! She said she was going for something that matches your eyes."

"Ha-ha, very funny." An idea struck Dipper, and he voiced it a little quicker than he'd preferred: "How's Wendy doing?"

As expected, Mabel laughed – though not as long as she usually did; was it Dipper's imagination or was the pained expression back on her face, just for a moment? " _ _Speaking__ of unbelievable crushes," she snickered. "She's doing great – but I think she misses you almost as much as you miss her, believe it or not."

"Really?"

"How did I know that was going to get your attention? In all honesty, you should see the present she's got for you: she's spent the last three days getting it ready."

"Something to look forward to, then. Oh, as long as we're talking about good things, how long can you stay?"

"Oh, since you're on the mend, I can stay for as long as I like. And," Mabel added with a grin, "I hear there's an episode of __Duck-tective__ on the daily schedule!"

"Right after __Ghost Harassers."__

"Awwwww."

"You said you had all day, Mabel; I think you can afford to wait."

"Alright, alright… but __I__ get first choice of videogames."

"You're on. Now, sit down here and let's get on with the show: we've got a lot of episodes to work around my exercise regimen, and I am not gonna let __that__ spoil my day for a change…"

* * *

Several hours later, Mabel finally left the isolation cell, whispering a soft farewell to Dipper over her shoulder as she departed. By that point, her brother was almost asleep, slumped across the couch and barely conscious enough to mutter a "g'bye" in her direction. She'd have liked to wake him up, just so they could have a proper goodbye, but she knew full well by now that Dipper needed his sleep: the treatments took a lot out of him, as did the inevitable response, and the fallout from both – physical and mental – was nothing short of devastating. No, it was better this way: at least this way, they wouldn't have to discuss the party; this way, Mabel didn't have to lie to him all over again.

As the airlock door hissed open, she considered waking Dipper up and telling him everything. For a whole minute, she stood paralysed in the doorway, silently grappling with her conscience. But in the end, she didn't go through with it – __couldn't__ : she'd tried the same thing on over a dozen separate visits, and by now she knew confessions like these were completely pointless. No matter what she said, no matter what Dipper learned, he'd forget every single word of it by next morning – along with everything else that had happened that day.

And so she shambled listlessly into the airlock, hating herself with every single step. She knew it would have been pointless, and that by confessing she'd only be bringing down another night of fruitless heartbreak upon her, but her conscience rarely listened to logic. It gnawed incessantly at her as the airlock cycled through its diagnostic procedures, demanding that she turn back and __do the right thing, you coward.__

Twice, Mabel succumbed to temptation and went so far as to reach for the "Abort Procedure" button, dead-set on striding back into the isolation cell and telling Dipper everything; but on both occasions, she couldn't go through with it. Inevitability kept dragging her back to reality, just as it had on the last few hundred visits.

Grunkle Ford wasn't waiting for her when she finally emerged into the preparation lab. No surprises there, sadly: now that Mabel had well and truly mastered the procedures of regression and reversion, there wasn't much need for him to supervise anymore. These days, Ford barely left his own laboratory, his time spent endlessly formulating the latest treatment for Dipper, only venturing outside when the time came to pay his respects at the cemetery.

But then, Mabel couldn't criticize: she rarely left the Mystery Shack at all anymore. After all, what was left for her out there? A few weathered gravestones, a forest that no longer tolerated intruders, a town empty except for the few desperate scavengers still clinging to the ruins of Gravity Falls, and beyond that, a world that had long since ceased to move her. Like Ford, she had nothing outside the shack's walls: her family was here, her work was here, her few joys left in life were here… and by all accounts, her destiny was here.

For a moment, she surveyed the lab, eyes drifting aimlessly across the banks of machinery that dominated the room: surveillance monitors, molecular fabricators, stasis chambers, and of course the four quantum regression chambers dominating the room. Once upon a time, there'd been a call for more than one visitor at a time, hence the extra chamber, and for a while, the others had come to visit Dipper just as regularly as Mabel: Mom, Dad, Stan, Ford, Wendy, Soos, Pacifica, and even Gideon had all taken on the guise of their younger selves and spent many happy hours chatting with Dipper. But constant heartbreak, worsened by the knowledge that Dipper would always forget the visits, slowly wore away their resolve: most of them simply couldn't bring themselves to visit again, and those who stayed were beset by other problems; violence, disease, and simple old age whittled away at their numbers, the band of hard-won friends slowly dying off one member at a time.

Now, Mabel and Stanford were all that remained – one of them too old, too sick and too augmented to withstand regression, and the other…

She eyed the massive screen looming over the airlock, which was busily spitting out its usual statistics about the isolation chamber's current occupant. ****"DAY 15695,"**** the digital readout proclaimed. It seemed such a bland declaration, but it was true: fifteen thousand six hundred and ninety-five days had passed since Dipper had fallen prey to Bill Cipher's dying curse; fifteen thousand six hundred and ninety-five days since he'd been committed to medical isolation; fifteen thousand six hundred and ninety-five days since the curse had started eating away at his memories; fifteen thousand six hundred and ninety-five days since he'd stopped aging.

Fifteen thousand six hundred and __fucking__ ninety-five days.

For Dipper, it would always be day five.

For everyone else, it had been forty-three long, miserable years.

 _ _No use putting it off any longer, Mabel: Ford needs your help now. It's time to put aside childish things… again.__

Groaning wearily, she undressed, removed her fake braces, bagged up her clothes and put them back in the stasis unit. Then, dressed in a deliberately oversized surgical gown, she strode over to the nearest regression chamber, keyed in the reversion program, and stepped inside. As the machine slowly rumbled to life, Mabel took a moment to examine her twelve-year-old self in the mirrored walls of the chamber: the luxuriant brown hair, the wide, innocent eyes, the button nose and the instinctively cheerful grin (now sans braces, of course). Then she took a deep breath and once again said goodbye to the smaller frame, the clear vision, the perfect hearing, the painless freedom of movement, to everything she could still appreciate about her younger form – everything except the lost opportunities.

And then the light blazed down from above. Mabel let out a scream of agony as the quantum energy permeated her body, accelerating her back to her real age; with a series of sickening pops and cracks of reshaping bone, her body __stretched__ upwards, limbs flailing wildly as they swiftly elongated to their adult length. Her hair shrank to a shoulder-length bob, turning grey and dull as it shortened; her skin withered and wrinkled, scar tissue accumulating across her arms and face as the years piled up; her fingers, already grown to adult size, gnarled and twisted with age, the knuckles swelling as arthritis set in hard. She tried to look away from her reflection as she transformed, but the entire chamber was mirrored, forcing her to watch herself warp and shrivel out of shape.

Thirty seconds later, the light switched off, allowing Mabel to topple to the ground. She rose slowly – but then she always got to her feet pretty slowly these days, always taking just a little longer to recover from the day's ordeals. She recalled how often she and the others had suggested using hologram projectors to disguise themselves around Dipper, if only because they'd be a little less painful to use… but then, what would happen if Dipper were to touch one of the holograms? One hug would have easily blown their cover. These days, she welcomed the regression process: quite apart from the joy of being able to spend time with her brother, it at least gave her a chance to enjoy a perfect bill of health for a chance. And as debilitating as reversion was, it never took _too_ long for the pain to fade: with this in mind, she staggered out of the chamber, retrieved her clothes from one of the stasis lockers, and got dressed.

She was fifty-six years of age now, her careworn features raked with old battlescars, her arms lined with the kind of muscles that only sheer, desperate survivalism could grant. Idly scratching at the old laceration still splitting her left eyebrow in half and wincing as her shirt brushed the long-healed bullet wound in her shoulder, she fastened her boiler suit in place, laced up her boots, and marched slowly but surely down the stairs – back into what was once the Mystery Shack.

Grunkle Ford was waiting for her by the front door, still in the process of fastening the locks. Time hadn't been kind to him, nor had the stress of research and the loss of so many old friends: the death of Grunkle Stan had been the worst blow to the old man yet, especially after the year-long struggle with cancer they'd endured. Less than a week after his brother's funeral, Ford had suffered a heart attack, one so disastrous that they'd had to call in help from Pacifica – the only contact in the outside world they could still rely on: for the next month, he'd remained in the care of a private hospital in Los Angeles, clinging to life while Mabel kept the labs running back in Gravity Falls. Even with the best treatment money could buy, it was a long and problematic road to recovery, especially once most of the doctors said they couldn't allow him to leave if he was just going to keep exerting himself: it simply wasn't possible for him to carry on in his usual way at his age, they said.

Ford, being Ford, retaliated by proving them wrong.

Now, Ford's withered body glittered with cyborg augmentations: his heart, his eyes, his lungs, and much of his digestive tract had all been replaced with ingenious mechanisms of his own design, and his ruined legs were now supported by a clattering set of titanium spider limbs, ferrying him about the Mystery Shack with eerie mechanical grace.

"How's Dipper?" he asked.

"He's fine… just as he always is… and always will be. How was the cemetery?"

"Beautiful. You should see it every now and again, have a chat with Stanley. It'll make you feel better."

Talking with the dead was one of Ford's newest habits. Of course, given that ghosts and zombies were a reality, it wasn't as if they couldn't reply, but Ford had claimed that Stan remained silent. "It's good," he'd once rasped hoarsely between sobs after one particularly emotional visit. "It means he's moved on."

"What about the statue in the woods?" Mabel enquired softly.

Ford's brow furrowed with repressed anger, his cyborg eyes flashing red.

"Magical activity's off the charts," he said quietly. "There's no doubt about it: Bill's alive in there, and while he might not be able to de-petrify his physical body, he's definitely up to something – and that something's almost certainly to do with Dipper."


	2. Breaking News

A/N: Aaaaaaaaaaand second chapter! A hearty thank-you to everyone who reviewed, favourited and followed: I'll do my best to keep Darkness Induced Audience Apathy from setting in, and with any luck I can keep enough twists and turns in play to keep it fascinating. So, without further ado, the latest chapter! Read, review and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Gravity Falls not mine - not surprise either.

* * *

Somewhere on the outer reaches of Gravity Falls, beyond the empty streets and derelict buildings, past the tumbledown remains of the Mystery Shack, a curious-looking statue stood alone among the vast redwoods that made up the bulk of the forest. Its surface was cracked and pitted, its body shrouded with vines, moss and fungi, its shape weathered by decades of wind and rain. But even after so many years of neglect, there was no mistaking those features: the triangular body, the jaunty top hat, the single eye still wide with maniacal glee, the arm still outstretched to accept that final deal with Stan Pines.

After all these years, there was no mistaking Bill Cipher.

To casual observers, the statue hadn't changed much apart from nature's ongoing reclamation. But to those who knew what to look for, Bill's earthly remains had undergone a startling metamorphosis in the last few months: all around the outstretched hand and staring eye, tiny motes of light had begun to flicker in and out of reality, too small to be noticed except under the right lighting conditions. Tiny gusts of wind would occasionally sweep across the clearing, carrying an unearthly aroma of thunderstorms and sulphur. On moonless nights, when the Mystery Shack's floodlights failed and the shadows gathered thick enough to blot out all other forms of lights, the eye of the statue appeared to glow a vivid electric-blue in the darkness – a flickering, ephemeral will-o'-the-wisp haunting the edge of the forest. On the stroke of midnight, a faint, almost-imperceptible peal of laughter could be heard to echo; back in the Mystery Shack, Dipper whimpered and turned over in his sleep, heartrate spiking dramatically as a fresh nightmare descended on him.

And somewhere just beyond human hearing, audible only to Ford's sensory equipment, a malignant voice whispered into the ether.

 _Sleep well, Pine Tree,_ it said. _Enjoy those nightmares while you can still remember them; enjoy having arms and legs and all those other cute things humans take for granted. I want you to enjoy every single moment of it… because I'll have it all soon. One day, Sixer's cures will fail, and there'll be nothing to stop me from colonizing all the dusty corners of that primitive blob of gristle and neurons you call a brain. And then…_

 _Then you'll be_ _ **mine.**_

* * *

"He's looking for a host," Ford explained.

Mabel's brow wrinkled. "Hold it right there," she said. "You're telling me that everything that's happened to Dipper for the last forty years – the memory loss, the inhibited aging, the anomalous immune system activity – it's not because of curse after all? It's just Bill trying to possess him again? Well, if that's the case, then how could he possibly manage that without Dipper willingly letting him in? I'm comfortably certain he wouldn't fall for that trick after everything Bill did to him the last time."

"This isn't possession, Mabel – in fact, my most recent tests confirm that Bill can't possess other living beings in his usual fashion anymore. If anything, this is more akin to a living, sentient infection. See, Bill hasn't existed in a singular state since Weirdmageddon ended: when Stanley destroyed him, his being was scattered across reality and in most cases simply dissipated into inert thought-stuff. But from what I've been able to work out, a few tiny fragments of Bill's essence were drawn to vessels closely tied to him, where they were able to survive dispersal… and _regenerate._ "

"By vessels you mean-"

"Previous bodies, yes. Not just the physical form he created at the start of Weirdmageddon, but the bodies of anyone he possessed or infiltrated in the past. Fortunately, most of these vessels couldn't be controlled: his old body's still petrified and Bill doesn't have the power to return it to normal; Stanley erased all traces of Bill from his brain – no footholds left there; and before I got that plate in my head, I spent several years progressively scrubbing Bill's influence out of my mind. But Dipper…" Ford sighed deeply. "Dipper's mind was undefended. Once he went back home at the end of the summer, there was nothing to stop Bill from invading his mind – and by the time I got back and discovered the infection, it was already too late."

The old man fell silent, head hung in shame, his eyes clenched shut as if to keep himself from crying – a habit left over from the days when Ford still had tears to shed. These days, his bionic eyes could only glow scarlet behind his closed eyelids. On instinct, Mabel reached out to put a comforting hand on his shoulder, but the aging scientist swatted her hand away before she could make contact.

"Grunkle Ford-"

"I already know what you're going to say, Mabel, and I'm going to have to stop you right there: this _is_ my fault _._ I was the one who celebrated before confirming that Bill was well and truly dead; I was the one who decided to go sailing around the world with Stanley without taking a proper look at that goddamn statue; I was the one who arrived home too late to make a proper diagnosis and stop the memory decay before it started… and I was the one who gave Bill a toehold in our reality to begin with. _This is my fault._ That's all there is to it."

"You can't know that, Ford, there's still a ton of variables that you couldn't have been responsible for. Besides, even if it is all your fault-"

"-Which it is-"

"Ford, _stop it._ This is not the time to beat yourself up over every little thing you could have done to prevent this: right now, we need to focus on what we can fix here and now. Now, you were explaining Bill's "infection"; if he's just out to take over Dipper's brain, why is he spending so much time futzing around with his memories? Why has he stopped him from aging?"

"Because he isn't just trying to evict Dipper's soul this time around. This time, Bill wants to transform him into a permanent vessel for his consciousness, a host body he can occupy for all eternity – hence the alterations made to your brother's telomeres and pituitary gland. In his weakened state, Bill can't just seize control immediately, so he has to slowly overtake each individual region of Dipper's brain via metastasis, systematically destroying his identity and hollowing out his mind to make room for the new tenant. From what I can work out, after tweaking his aging process, the process was supposed to begin with his memories and move swiftly on to his emotions, personality traits, everything – right down the most basic building blocks of his psyche. The serums I've been giving him have halted the infection at stage one and kept the decay from spreading to Dipper's long-term memory, but it hasn't been enough to stop anterograde amnesia from setting in."

Ford paused, and sighed deeply. "And unfortunately, my serums might not be enough anymore, certainly not enough to stop Bill from leaving his mark – figuratively _and_ literally."

By way of explanation, he reached over to a small control panel on the harness holding him aloft, all six fingers dancing across the keyboard with arachnid grace; instantly, a tiny hologram projector on Ford's shoulder rattled to life, projecting an MRI scan of a human brain onto the empty air in front of him. After so many years spent helping with her brother's treatment, there was no mistaking Dipper's brain scans or the distinctive blotches that had marred it for over four decades – the signs of what she and Ford had mistaken for the earmarks of Bill Cipher's dying curse. But something had clearly changed: those same ugly blotches had grown by several millimetres since she'd last seen them, and many of them had started to glow an eerie electric blue.

"Is that-?"

"Yes," said Ford, solemnly. "That's Bill. And he's _growing."_ That heavy, world-weary sigh again, as he switched off the hologram projector. "The hell of it is, I still don't know how he's gotten the strength to do this. I don't know why he's suddenly developed a resistance to my serums, I don't know why he's gathered enough strength in his statue form to start manifesting like he has been for the last couple of nights – Lord only knows he couldn't manage that unless he had enough essence stored away in other vessels, and to the best of my knowledge, there's only two of them left alive on the planet. All I know is that if we don't find a cure soon, Dipper is as good as dead."

"And Weirdmageddon starts all over again."

"Precisely. And what with everything that's happened to the town in the last twenty-five years, the barrier won't be stable enough to keep Bill from escaping this time around."

Now it was Mabel's turn to sigh. "Tell me we at least have some kind of a plan in play."

"You don't sound particularly distressed."

"Grunkle Ford, I've just had to spend the last few hours lying to Dipper about literally everything and pretending that we're _not_ the only family members he has left. Between that and another round of regressions and reversions, I've just about exhausted my supply of emotional turmoil for the day. Now, do we have a plan for saving Dipper?"

"Well, according to my instruments, the majority of Bill's essence is still in his petrified body outside: for now, it's the main container for his consciousness, and from there he issues his commands to the other little pockets of essence scattered around Gravity Falls."

"So all we've got to do is smash the statue?"

"Er…" Ford laughed sheepishly. "I may have already tried that. It didn't work… and I think I may need a new jackhammer. Suffice it to say that Bill's physical form cannot be destroyed. So, top priority is to stop Bill from issuing any more commands to the parts of him left in Dipper's mind before we can get around to curing him: once again, it's all down to protecting his brain. Nothing as invasive as a metal plate," he added quickly. "All we need is to implant a webbing of microscopic fibres around his skull: it's a simple operation with very little risk to Dipper even if Bill realizes what we're up to – shouldn't take much more than an hour to finish implantation."

Mabel's stomach lurched. "There's just one problem," she said. "If you're talking about fibres being enough to protect him from Bill, then you're clearly talking about unicorn hair. _Please_ tell me we're not going on another goddamn unicorn hunt; the last time I had to deal with them was bad enough before the forest turned nasty, and I don't mind telling you that I'm not in the mood for fighting militarized unicorns and Christ only knows what else that hellhole can throw at us."

"Fortunately, unicorn hunts are out of the question. Unfortunately, it's not for the reasons you think: some time ago, I visited the glade where Celestabellebethbelle used to reside, and from the looks of things there aren't any unicorns left. Someone's been hunting them, and if they're not capturing them alive, they're just killing them right there in the middle of the glade. There's at least three carcasses hanging from the trees out there – shaved, flayed, bled dry and stripped of lacrimal glands."

"Poachers?"

"No, not poachers. According to the witnesses, these people were far too well-organized – and I don't think many magic-poachers in the United States have access to military-grade weaponry. So, our only source of unicorn hair is the Mystery Shack itself, and I don't need to tell you what that'll mean for us."

Mabel nodded wearily. Back when Ford and Dipper had first set up the Shack's magical defences, it had been specifically to defend against Bill's mental incursions and little else; once Weirdmageddon had ended and sent the Henchmaniacs spiralling back into the Nightmare Realm, nobody had thought the shielding would see any further use. Unfortunately, Dipper's illness had more than its fair share of consequences, and once unfriendly eyes had turned in the direction of Gravity Falls, the paranormal inhabitants of the town and its surrounding forest had militarized in a very serious way. Barely a few days into the conflict, a gang of vengeful gnomes had broken into the Shack and successfully chewed through every single length of unicorn hair on the western end of the building, leaving a massive hole in their shielding. Forty years onwards, the remains of that shield were now bolstered with dozens upon dozens of homemade gun turrets, landmines, and other booby traps, forcing the more expeditious magical creatures to attack from the east or risk being mowed down before they could even reach the Shack; thousands of spells, curses, hexes and enchantments had been cast upon the eastern flank, and the unicorn hair shield had soaked up every last atom of power… but now, if they wanted to keep Dipper safe, they'd have to cannibalize their defences even further – and risk getting caught with their pants down if anyone decided to launch a magic attack before the work was over and done with.

"Do you have a plan on what to do once the shielding's in place?" Mabel asked quietly.

"Well, I believe that without constant backup from Bill, I my latest serum might be potent enough to reverse the spread of the infection in Dipper's brain by at least fifty percent. True, it won't be enough to excise Bill from Dipper's brain entirely, but it'll be enough to restore Dipper's ability to properly memorize. After that, Bill won't be able to claim him as a host as long as the defences hold."

"And then? We've still got Bill's essence floating around in the statue outside. What are we going to do about that?"

Grunkle Ford took a deep breath. "That's… going to be very difficult."

"In what way?"

"Well... just _difficult,_ I suppose."

"Elaboration would be helpful."

"Really, _really_ difficult."

" _Ford…"_

That put-upon sigh again. "Mabel, I can't confirm anything at this point. I'm improvising like crazy, throwing science at the wall and seeing what sticks, basically. I've got a few possibilities at work, but nothing absolutely positively certain. In fact, the one idea I had was… well, let's just say that I have a newfound appreciation for my brother's efforts. For now, let's just focus on getting Dipper's brain properly shielded."

"And after that?"

"Can't we cross that bridge when we-"

" _Listen to me for one goddamn minute,_ _ **please!"**_ Mabel exploded. "Ford, if your hypothesis works out, Dipper will have long-term memory again. What the hell are we going to do when he wakes up tomorrow morning and notices that it's day two at long last? We can't just keep pretending that everything's okay; he's bound to notice that I'm his only visitor, and once enough time's passed, he'll start asking questions… and sooner or later, _he will figure this out._ " Mabel took a deep, shuddering breath to steady herself, and continued: "We always knew this was a possibility, Grunkle Ford: we always hoped that he'd be out of that isolation cell one day… but now that a proper cure's within reach, we're going to be releasing him into hell on earth. His parents are dead, Grunkle Stan is dead, Wendy's on life-support in Monnoc Prison, Soos was murdered, Pacifica _killed herself,_ Gravity Falls has turned into a ghost town, and everyone from the President down wants him carved up like a Thanksgiving turkey. Up until now, when I've broken the rules and told him everything, I've at least had the amnesia as a safety net… but now we're working without the net, and we've got to face the fact that Dipper might react _badly –_ and quite frankly, I wouldn't blame him if he completely lost his mind. What the hell are we… am _I_ going to tell him?"

Mabel took a deep breath, and belatedly realized she was crying. _Wow,_ she thought bemusedly, _I suppose I still have a few tears to shed after all._

And in the silence that followed, an ashen-faced Ford could only hang his head and say the three terrible words she'd been dreading:

"I don't know."

* * *

Three long hours later, Mabel sat alone in the Mystery Shack's attic, trying – as she always did – not to look at the empty bed on the other side of the room. Forty years was a long time to avert her eyes, but somehow she managed.

Downstairs, Ford had successfully sedated the already-sleeping Dipper and was now getting ready to implant the unicorn hair; it had taken too long to gather the necessary equipment and prep the laboratory – after all, the Mystery Shack had never been built for major surgical operations, even after all the additions Ford had made to it over the years. Then again, it wasn't as if Mabel herself was suited to surgery, hence the reason why she'd decided to sit this particular operation out while she considered her approach.

 _Why couldn't we have figured this out sooner?_ She thought miserably. _Why couldn't we have learned what this "curse" really was in the beginning, back when mom and dad were still alive and all our friends were still together? By now, I'd almost consider it a blessing_ not _to remember… but then again, that's just going the way of Old Man McGucket. Oh god,_ McGucket _…_

Unbidden, a vision of Fiddleford McGucket's funeral rippled in and out of Mabel's brain. On that bleak day thirty-nine years ago, she'd seen many sad and terrible things, but out of all of them, it had been the memory of Grunkle Ford's reaction that had truly stuck in her mind: he'd been _beyond_ inconsolable, a silent, grief-stricken wreck for most of the ceremony up until the time came for the coffin to be lowered into the grave – whereupon he'd broken down in a flood of tears and spent the next minutes crying his eyes out. In the end, Grunkle Stan had to bodily carry him out of the cemetery in a fireman's lift. As Stan himself later explained, he'd been doing his best to console him, but eventually had fallen silent as he realized there was nothing he could say or do that would assuage Ford's sorrow: all he could do was give him his shoulder to cry on and wait until the storm finally passed. At the time, nobody believed that anyone would want to have McGucket assassinated, and yet they couldn't bring themselves to refute the conspiracy theories already brewing: and so, they could only listen sadly as Ford's tear-choked accusations rang out across the cemetery, totally unaware that the devastated scientist was absolutely right.

Years later, when Stan's long battle with cancer finally drew to a close, Ford's grief somehow exceeded even that spectacular display: if anything, he'd gotten within inches of joining Stan for good – to this day, Mabel was certain that the mangling of Ford's legs hadn't been an accident after all. The overexertion-induced heart attack all but confirmed this.

 _And now I've got to guess at how Dipper's supposed to react to the fact that everyone he ever knew and loved is dead except for me and Ford. Will he break down like Ford did? Will he go into denial, refuse to believe what I tell him? Or will he just snap in the face of all the horrible details? Have I got to keep an eye out for suicidal behaviour? Oh my god, my god, my god…_

 _Oh come on Mabel,_ sneered a hateful little voice in the back of her head. _It's not as if_ _ **you**_ _haven't considered the same damn thing in the past._

Mabel fought a powerful urge to punch the wall and lunged to her feet, scrambling for something – _anything_ – that could take her mind off the interminable stream of unwelcome thoughts slowly flooding her brain.

But it wasn't until she found the dilapidated laptop and its heavily-masked internet connection that she was finally able to soothe her nerves at long last – a sadly not-unexpected problem: over the last forty years, she'd seen just about every single film in the Mystery Shack's archives, read every book in their meagre library, and played every game they'd managed to scavenge; with the world beyond Gravity Falls turned hostile and untrustworthy, Mabel's sole access to the rest of the world lay in the Internet – and as time went on and stress began eating away at her art projects, it had quickly become her few means of respite from the depression that regularly assaulted her.

The news pages were as catastrophic as ever, blaring an endless stream of desperate headlines into the Internet's endless ether:

"SEARCH FOR ETERNAL YOUTH STALLED! BIOTECH FIRMS ONCE AGAIN STYMIED BY LOSS OF SUBJECT ZERO!"

"IS MAGIC REAL? GIDEON GLEEFUL'S LAST MOMENTS STUDIED BY PROFESSIONAL DEBUNKERS!"

"GOVERNMENT AGENCY ACCUSED OF HOARDING PARANORMAL ARTEFACTS! FORMER PRESIDENT LASHES OUT AT FEDERAL INVESTIGATIVE AGENCY FOR CRIMINAL ACTIVITY!"

"SWARM OF WINGED EYEBALLS SPOTTED OVER MIAMI! MYSTERIOUS PLAGUE OF STATUES FOLLOWS!"

"WEST COAST TECH SCANDAL! LEGENDARY UNIVERSITY SHUT DOWN AMID CORRUPTION CHARGES!"

"GRENDA AND MARIUS VON FUNDSHAUSER MEMORIAL UNVEILED IN VIENNA!"

"WHATEVER HAPPENED TO GRAVITY FALLS? THIRTY-YEAR SEARCH FOR MISSING TOWN CONTINUES!"

 _Guess those stealth beacons are still working,_ Mabel thought with a smirk.

"WAS POLONIUS NORTHWEST MURDERED?" the next headline blared on. "INVESTIGATION CONTINUES INTO DISAPPEARANCE OF NORTHWEST FAMILY HEIR."

Normally, Mabel would have left this kind of headline on the side of the plate: she'd had several years to get to grips with Pacifica's death, and the fate of her son – a man too cataclysmically stoned to attend his own mother's funeral and too spoiled to care even when sober – didn't interest her in the slightest. But then she saw the photograph of the deceased under the headline, and her heart skipped a beat. Polonius himself wasn't all that interesting – a hateful little brat with Preston's smug little smirk and none of the old bastard's halfassed charm – but the tiny gold pendant clipped to his tie drew her attention like a magnet: a familiar-looking pyramid shape capped with an all-seeing eye and surmounted by a tiny top hat.

And was it just a trick of the light, or was the pendant glowing electric blue?

Grunkle Ford's words trickled back into the forefront of her mind: _I still don't know how he's gotten the strength to do this. I don't know why he's suddenly developed a resistance to my serums, I don't know why he's gathered enough strength in his statue form to start manifesting like he has been for the last couple of nights – Lord only knows he couldn't manage that unless he had enough essence stored away in other vessels…_

Just as a theory was forming in Mabel's head, the bottom of the page flickered suddenly, and a new headline appeared under the "breaking news" section: "NORTHWEST CRYPT VANDALIZED!" the title screamed. "BODIES OF PACIFICA, PRESTON AND PRISCILLA STOLEN FROM RELOCATED MAUSOLEUM IN BOSTON!"

And under that, "TRAIL OF DECOMPOSING FLESH LITTERS INTERSTATE! BELIEVED TO BE MOVING IN DIRECTION OF ROADKILL COUNTY OREGON!"

Mabel's eyes widened. Suddenly, everything made perfect, _terrifying_ sense.

"Hot Belgian Waffles," she muttered.

Embarrassingly enough, those were the last words to leave her mouth before the first explosion rocked the house, sending her tumbling off the bed and out through the open window.

* * *

 _A/N: What could happen next? Feel free to give me your opinions, predictions and theories!_


	3. New Arrivals

A/N: New chapter time! I'm doing my best to keep these chapters relatively short so that I don't end up cramming an entire novel's worth of info into each installment, and I hope you'll forgive me if they veer towards the excessive at any point in terms of word length. Be warned, this particular chapter's going to be a bit less mystery and a bit more action-y; plus, there's also going to be a bit of clarification on the events following Dipper's infection/possession and a few more specifics behind it. But before we begin, a few quick review responses - not all of them alas, we've got a chapter to make room for:

 **Northgalus2002:** Remember, happy endings are always possible; the trick is pulling off a happy ending without making it seem like a deus ex machina. Can I manage this? We shall see! Thanks again for your review!

 **PotatoO'Brien:** I hate to say this, considering it makes me sound as though I'm trying some kind of godawful external retcon, but yeah I pretty much meant to make it obvious; quite apart from the fact that it's the point where Mabel reaches a eureka moment - and then gets blasted out the window before she can act on it - there's a very old established rule in fiction: if anyone ever utters the words "it's probably nothing" or something like them, then it's _definitely something,_ whatever it is. Beware anyone who says "it's just a cold" - they've got cholera; beware of "probably just a glitch," it's a sure sign that the security cameras are being hacked.

Thank you all for your reviews - I'm so glad you've enjoyed it so far, and I hope I can continue to maintain the standards you've come to expect. So anyway - without further ado, the latest chapter: read, review and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: _Gravity Falls_ is not mine. If it was, it probably would have achieved sentience and rioted over all the darkfic I've been writing.

* * *

"Ford! _Ford!_ We have intruders in quadrants A through to C; someone's managed to pierce the Shroud!"

Ford let out a groan, mopped a trickle of blood off his forehead, and wearily reached for the commlink at his hip. "I'd gathered that, Mabel," he panted. "Are you alright?"

"Well, I think I damn near broke my leg falling out of the window, but I'm otherwise unhurt. Good news is, I'm back inside and manning the defences."

"Any idea who's attacking us?"

"None. Whoever they are, they're heavily armed: I'm already seeing armoured vehicles on the horizon, and judging by the explosion, some kind of mortar – or maybe it's another saturation bombing, I don't know. The lawn defences aren't properly arrayed, so I've had to take them offline while I redeploy them; hopefully there'll be enough for whoever's attacking us. How's Dipper?"

"Still stable, considering I haven't operated yet. Hold tight, I'll be with you in just a-"

" _Oh no you don't!_ You need to finish the surgery, Ford! If these people are who we think they are, then they're here to capture Dipper; you need to stay there and protect him in case anyone tries to sneak in while I'm distracted. Plus, if Dipper's removed from the building before the unicorn hair's implanted, then these goons will be giving Bill Cipher a free ticket to take him over entirely, and I'll be damned if I let that triangular bastard win after all the agony he's caused over the last few decades!"

Ford sighed. "Understood. You let me know if we need any additional pairs of hands."

"I'm already heading to the copier right now; we never used that in battle before, so I think we'll have the advantage of surprise. You keep the Lazarus subject in reserve."

"What about the Sherriff and the Deputy?"

"Only as a last resort." From the other end of the comm, there was a thunderous explosion, and Mabel hissed an ear-scorching chain of obscenities. "They've reached the carpark; I'm going to have to maintain radio silence for the next few minutes. Focus on the surgery, and I'll deal with the intruders as best as I can."

"Best of luck."

"You too, Grunkle Ford."

And with that, she signed off. In the deafening silence that followed, Ford muttered a bilious expletive of his own, picked himself off the ground and hobbled mechanically over to the table where Dipper lay, still safely sedated.

Stanford Filbrick Pines had been through a great many weird and troublesome things over the course of his lifetime, and had walked away with considerable experience in a wide variety of fields. Unfortunately, performing surgery under artillery fire wasn't one of them.

Or at least he had to _assume_ it was artillery fire, unless of course their attacker had magic on their side (which probably still counted as artillery, come to think of it). So far, all he knew was that someone or something was pummelling the Mystery Shack with enough firepower to rattle the armour-plating and shake dust from the rafters. Sad to say this wasn't the first time the dilapidated old tourist trap had endured a sustained bombardment, and in the days before he'd had been able to effectively dislocate Gravity Falls from the outside world, the inhabitants of the Mystery Shack had been forced to fortify the building against uninvited guests. And there were many of them, uncountable multitudes outnumbering even the formidable armies of the forest, and had been ever since that awful day forty years ago.

Once the news of Dipper's unique condition had slipped into the public domain all those years ago, everyone on the planet had wanted a piece of him for one reason or another: the circling media vultures, the accolade-hungry scientists, the ever-avaricious biotech firms, the wheezing old plutocrats, the overstarched government representatives, and religious fanatics of every stripe – sooner or later, they showed up at the Mystery Shack, demanding their share of Dipper's life. Some of them wanted to document him, others wanted to harvest him for valuable DNA, and a rare and especially hateful few wanted to make him their property. And no matter how many times they were told that this was not possible, they always came crawling back with grander promises – and as time went on, greater threats.

Many of them seemed to be under the impression that Ford had somehow _made_ Dipper immortal, and he could confer this agelessness to them at a moment's notice. God only knew he'd tried to set the record straight: he'd told them about Bill Cipher, about how Stanley had defeated him, about how Bill had branded Dipper with his curse (or so they'd thought at the time). But nobody had believed him, even when the reality of the situation was staring them in the face. So, like an idiot, he'd tried to appease them.

Studying Dipper's condition at length, he and Fiddleford had been able to mimic its effects by creating the first quantum regression chamber, and then offered their first prototypes up to the most persistent of their guests in the hope that it would be enough to get some peace and quiet. For a while, the corporations who'd seen the profitability in eternal youth were satisfied, and the critically-ill billionaires who'd been hoping for a miracle were given the reprieve they'd always wanted.

And then it had all gone horribly wrong: it turned out that the regression only lasted for about twenty-four hours before disastrous instabilities started setting in and the subject had to be reverted to their normal age for their own safety. In a move that the biggest of the offending corporations were probably still kicking themselves over, they'd destroyed the regression chambers and gone on the offensive, refusing to accept anything other than the grand prize in the race to commoditize immortality.

For almost a year, they'd machine-gunned the Mystery Shack with one lawsuit after another, trying everything they could to get Dipper out of the house and into their clutches: they'd claimed he was being held against his will, that he was being abused by his "caretakers," that he wasn't a human being at all but actually a bio-engineered life-form created in clear violation of the law, that Ford was a terrorist, running a meth lab in the Mystery Shack, or just plain senile… they'd even brought out Stan's prior arrest record and splattered the story of how he'd faked his death all over the front pages. On the upside, Agent Powers and Agent Trigger still had no memory of their failed raid on Gravity Falls, so the most damaging stories remained out of public circulation.

Eventually, someone lost patience: one night, a squad of black-clad mercenaries hired by Strandon BioMed crept into the Mystery Shack under cover of darkness and tried to kidnap Dipper. Fortunately, they tripped the laboratory alarms on their way in, and the abortive kidnappers had ended up getting the living crap kicked out of them by a trio of pissed-off geriatrics, before being unceremoniously remanded to police custody. Unfortunately, the kidnappers had been hired through intermediaries and had no idea who their real employers were; the corporate instigators of the crime had stayed out of court, their hired goons had gone to prison, and Ford hadn't been able to prove a thing – not until it was too late.

About four years into Dipper's time in isolation, Fiddleford had been fatally poisoned – _their_ way of sending Ford a message. He'd wanted their blood on his hands for that, but once again the perpetrators were out of his reach, and he needed to keep Dipper's condition from worsening; so, he'd smothered his rage and returned to work.

It hadn't ended there, either. For six long years, the attacks continued, each one a little less subtle than the last as the race to commoditize immortality grew more and more frenzied. But it wasn't until the US government had gotten involved – and authorized a covert bombing run on Gravity Falls – that Mabel, Ford and Stanley had made the decision to sever the town from the rest of the world. While everyone who'd still had business in the outside world left as quickly and quietly as possible, the three of them had set to work on devices powerful enough to render the town effectively unreachable: inventions of Ford's own design and antediluvian spells transcribed from hundreds of scavenged grimoires combined to produce a field not only capable of hiding Gravity Falls and the surrounding forest from the prying eyes of outsiders, but also making it completely intangible to anyone outside the field.

Once the Shroud Field was up, they were secure: the government, the corporations, the death cultists – they could look for as long as they wanted, but Dipper would be forever beyond their reach. Pacifica, Gideon, Grenda, Candy and the others who'd chosen to live in the outside world had stayed in contact with the Mystery Shack via coded transmissions, occasionally returning to pay their respects in as stealthy a manner as possible (usually via underground tunnels). Even when the supernatural inhabitants of the area had turned hostile, even after poachers and other interlopers had found tunnels of their own through which they could enter the forest, the field had seemed more than sufficient to keep the Shack safe while the others busied themselves with finding a cure for Dipper.

They'd gone on believing that, even as their friends in the outside world had slowly died off, even as the magical denizens of the forest had begun preying upon the few remaining inhabitants of Gravity Falls, even as Ford and Stanley began spending more time upgrading the Shack's defences when they _should_ have been hard at work on the cure.

For thirty long years, Gravity Falls had remained hidden, and the residents of the Mystery Shack had no cause to leave except in the direst of emergencies: the "shopping trips" for medical supplies, the hunt for Soos's murderers, the failed assault on Monoc Prison, and Ford's heart-attack. For over three decades, the Shroud had held and the town had been safe – for a given value of "safe," anyway.

And now, thirty years on, the invaders were back.

Judging from the instruments on Ford's handheld console, there was now a gap in the Shroud Field large enough to fly a cargo plane through. And if those ominous silhouettes on the scanners were accurate…

For perhaps the third time in its history, Gravity Falls now sat squarely in the government's crosshairs.

Muttering another bilious expletive, Ford double-checked the medical instruments, made sure Dipper was secured on the operating table, prepared the unicorn hair for implantation, and set to work.

 _First incision in three, two, one…_

* * *

From the safety of the forward bulkhead, Mabel stared out in dismay at the forces slowly amassing in front of her. With night having fallen heavily on Gravity Falls and most of the streetlights having long since burnt out, it was impossible to tell just how many hostiles were gathering in the shadows beyond the Mystery Shack's floodlights; as for the enemies that had the decency to actually appear in the car park, Mabel could clearly see at least four armoured troop transports, two helicopters, and what appeared to be a tank… and following close behind was an entire battalion of heavily-armed soldiers. For all she knew, there could be an entire company of men and vehicles out there, just waiting to join the fight.

 _Come on, Mabel,_ she snarled silently. _You've done battle with Nomes, waxwork monsters, giant robots, zombies, shapeshifters, even Bill Cipher himself. What's a few soldiers and tanks compared to Weirdmageddon? Cowboy up. You've got everything you need right here in the Mystery Shack._

Somewhere on the horizon, there was an eye-searing flash of light; a moment later, another explosion shook the Mystery Shack as the mortar shell landed with a thud in the back yard.

 _Okay, this may be a bit more difficult than previously expected._

Somewhere at the head of the army, a deafening voice hollered, "THIS IS ASSISTANT DIRECTOR WELLS, REPRESENTING THE FEDERAL INVESTIGATIVE AGENCY. THE HOUSE IS SURROUNDED: YOU HAVE NO CHANCE TO ESCAPE OR RETALIATE. SURRENDER IMMEDIATELY AND ALLOW US TO EXTRACT SUBJECT ZERO FROM THE BUILDING, AND YOU WILL NOT BE HARMED. RESIST, AND WE WILL BE FORCED TO USE DEADLY FORCE."

Mabel took a deep breath, immediately suppressing rage at the mention of "subject zero," the hatefully dehumanizing name that the rest of the world had bestowed on Dipper. _Because god only knows you people can't afford to think of him as a human being,_ she fumed silently. _Not when you're planning to cut him open so you can learn what makes him tick and sell it on the open market. You even had that nickname put about in the media just so nobody would feel bad about buying an immortality product based on Dipper's flayed internal organs. Selfish, stupid avaricious sons of bitches…._

She took another deep breath as she paused for thought, and then turned to the paper duplicate hunkered down next to her. "Mabel 2," she whispered, "Remember the explosives we've got gathering dust in the armoury?"

"Sure, why?"

"Well, I'm going to have to ask something extremely drastic of you and the girls."

And to her immense relief, the paper clone's face displayed a set, determined expression. "For Dipper," she said solemnly, issuing a salute.

Behind her, the other twelve Mabel clones issued salutes of their own. "For Dipper," they repeated.

"Good to hear. Now, I need you to buy me some time and do some damage to these bastards while I mobilize the shack's defences. We need you to concentrate fire on their artillery before they find a way of punching holes in the Shack's armour-plating. But in the meantime…" Mabel paused, and then opened the nearest window – careful to keep her head below the sill in case of snipers.

"WE'LL BE LEAVING THE HOUSE IN FIVE MINUTES!" she shouted. "WE'RE IN THE MIDDLE OF EMERGENCY SURGERY DOWN HERE!"

"THIS IS NOT THE TIME FOR NEGOTIATION," Assistant Director Wells boomed back. "LEAVE NOW OR WE WILL COMMENCE BOMBARDMENT!"

"DO YOU WANT YOUR SUBJECT ZERO DEAD?" Mabel roared. "GIVE US FIVE MINUTES TO PATCH HIM UP AND GET HIM READY TO MOVE, OR YOU CAN KISS YOUR PRIZE TEST SUBJECT GOODBYE!"

There was a stunned pause, and eventually the voice on the other end of the megaphone conceded, "FIVE MINUTES. NOT A SECOND LONGER."

"Perfect," she muttered. "Alright, girls, you heard him: we have five minutes to ready the bombs, so let's get cracking. These people want us all out of the house, so let's not disappoint them."

* * *

Five short minutes later, Assistant Director Wells sighed in relief as Mabel Pines finally staggered out through the front door, awkwardly pushing a gurney in front of her. Admittedly, it was impossible to tell if the figure lying on the gurney was Subject Zero or not: whoever or whatever it was, the target's sister had covered it with a sheet. This could very well be a ruse; maybe Subject Zero was still in the house or being extracted from the building by some method that previous surveillance attempt hadn't discovered. Even so, this at least gave them one less threat to deal with: of the hostiles currently residing in the Shack, Mabel Pines was undoubtedly the more dangerous of the two; true, Stanford Pines was a credible threat thanks to his impressive technical knowledge, but the Monoc Island incident had proved that "Bloody Murder Mabel" was undeniably the deadliest and most unpredictable of all the opponents guarding the target…

…a fact that only made her surrender seem all the more unlikely.

"Where's Stanford Pines?" Wells asked.

"He's dead," Mabel replied solemnly, as she drew closer. "Killed in the last gnome attack."

 _Gnomes?_

"You'll forgive us if we don't take you at your word, ma'am." Wells tapped his microphone. "Whiskey Squad, proceed to shack entrance; assume Stanford Pines is inside and armed, but do not open fire until Subject Zero is secured. Tango Squad, cover the back door; prepare for hostiles fleeing the area, but hold fire until Subject Zero can be removed from the firing line. Foxtrot Squad-"

There was a crackle from the commlink, and an urgent voice announced, "Assistant Director Wells, this is Sergeant Groshley at the alpha mortar emplacement. We have Mabel Pines."

 _Wait, what?_

"Say again, Sergeant?"

"Sir, Mabel Pines has just surrendered to us; we've reason to suspect she's got Subject Zero in tow as well, sir."

Wells' brow wrinkled. "You're sure it's Mabel?"

"She looks a little pale, sir, but otherwise she's a perfect match for all photographic evidence and current age projections. We're not as certain about Subject Zero, though: he's been strapped to a gurney and covered with a sheet; we'll know just as soon as we've finished checking Mabel for arms… once she's actually stopped moving. _Hey you! Hurry it up over there, we haven't got all night! Bring that gurney to a stop and put your hands in the air!_ "

There was a long pause, as Wells looked from the surrendering hostile standing in front of him to the distant hillock where the mortar emplacement stood, and then back again. He took in Mabel's ingenuous smile, the empty hands, the pocketless scrubs, the leisurely pace – and that infuriatingly abstract shape on the gurney she was pushing.

"Alright," he grumbled. "What's going on-"

The radio crackled to life again: "Sir, Tango Squad here. We have Mabel Pines _and_ Subject Zero-"

"-This is artillery emplacement Bravo, sir; Mabel Pines just surrendered Subject Zero to us-"

"-Captain Hocksetter with the armoured company approaching main street; Subject Zero's just been delivered to us by-"

"-we just caught Mabel Pines attempting to flee via the forest with Subject Zero on a-"

"-It's weird, sir, she looks a bit on the pale side, but otherwise-"

"-Can't be certain if it's really him on the gurney-"

"-She's taking her sweet time to get over here-"

"-Corporal, could you hurry her up or something? This is really starting to drag-"

 _Twelve Mabels in twelve different places,_ Wells thought. _I don't recall the brief mentioning anything about Stanford Pines experimenting on clones, but with all the crap that's happened in this Podunk town in the last few decades, I suppose anything's possible._

"Alright," he said loudly. "Fun's over. I don't know how you managed this little stunt, and frankly I don't care: we _will_ find out which of you is the real Mabel Pines, and I guarantee you that we will find the real Subject Zero. Now stop where you are and- _HEY!_ KEEP THOSE HANDS WHERE I CAN SEE THEM!"

By now, the nearest of the Mabels had ground to a halt in the middle of the car park, less than two feet from Wells and the bulk of the infantry; now, she was drawing something from the gurney in front of her, and every single rifle in the platoon was pointed squarely at her. Not even remotely distressed by the sudden attentions of almost a hundred armed soldiers, Mabel laughingly held up the offending object, revealing that it was in fact just a simple plastic water bottle.

"I'm thirsty!" she explained cheerily, and took a healthy swing of the bottle's contents. "See? No harm done – to you at any rate."

"Right," Wells grumbled. "Very funny. Do anything like that again, whoever you are, and I cannot guarantee your safety and _what the hell?!"_

Mabel was melting: in the few seconds that Wells had spent reprimanding her, Mabel's feet had already dissolved into a gluey mass of pale-blue fluid on the asphalt on front of him, and the rest of her body was beginning to follower. As the rest of the platoon gathered around in astonishment, the liquefaction reached her hips, her stomach oozing and warping out of shape as the dissolution progressed swiftly towards her head; and yet, the smile never left Mabel's face even as her chin finally dissolved into shapeless gloop. Indeed, she was _laughing._

Her last words – just before her skull dissolved into the growing puddle – was a single gleeful shriek of "So long suckeeeeeerrrrrgbgbbbgbgbg…"

Five seconds later, nothing was left of _not-_ Mabel Pines but a viscous pool of translucent fluid on the asphalt – a fluid that Wells found curiously reminiscent of waterlogged paper. But sitting in the middle of the puddle was a length of electrodes attached to wires leading back onto the sheet-covered gurney. Baffled, Wells reached out and slowly drew the cover off the gurney, revealing-

His eyes widened in horror.

As expected, the figure lying under the sheet was not Subject Zero.

It was, in fact, several pounds of plastic explosive... and judging by the electrodes attached to the detonator, it was wired to explode as soon as _not-_ Mabel's vital signs had ceased.

Assistant Director Larry Gavin Wells had just enough time to mutter "Holy Mother of God," before the entire gurney exploded in his face, immediately engulfing him and the nearest ranks in a fireball intense enough to melt the hulls of the armoured vehicles flanking them. His last thought, before he was reduced to a mass of airborne charcoal, was to wonder just how Mabel Pines had managed this little stunt. And then the shockwave rippled through the inferno and scattered his thoughts to the four winds with the rest of his body.

* * *

Twelve enormous explosions shook the surrounding forest, each one wiping several hundred enemy combatants off the map. Immediately, reinforcements surged into the car park to replace them, armoured vehicles and heavy infantry charging towards the Mystery Shack in a furious attempt to avenge their fallen commander. Even with most of the mortars and artillery wiped out by the cloned bombers, they still might have made it all the way to the doorstep…

…had the real Mabel not appeared at the front door, armed with a rifle and flanked on all sides by several dozen automated gun turrets.

And then, just when it seemed as though the situation couldn't get any more confusing, there was a colossal rustling sound from somewhere just beyond the shack – loud enough to stop the advancing soldiers dead in their tracks.

As all eyes turned in the direction of the forest, a vast army of tiny figures swarmed from the darkness between the trees: gnomes – a war-host over ten-thousand strong, each of them armed with a vicious assortment of blades, bludgeons and crossbows, each tiny body fortified with scrap metal armour-plating scavenged from an uncountable multitude of baked bean cans. Worse still, the gnomes were clearly not alone: alongside them stood several hundred mercenary Lilliputtians drawn from every faction left on the golf-course, each of them mounted in a tiny catapult just powerful enough to launch them deep into enemy ranks. Standing in readiness at the flanks of the horde stood almost three-dozen gigantic Manotaurs, each one restrained and harnessed with heavy chains, their broad shoulders lined with siege platforms large enough to support over a dozen gnomes each. And in the distance, overshadowing even the Manotaurs, were the familiar shapes of the gnome colossi – thousands upon thousands of gnomes gathered into one single unstoppable monstrosity. From what little Mabel could see, there had to be at least _four_ of them.

At the head of the army, mounted on the back of a massive black bear, stood the tallest gnome that Mabel had ever seen in her entire life – twenty-eight inches high at the very least. Dressed in a gleaming cuirass of silvery-grey alloys, his chest was clustered with tiny medals forged from bottlecaps and pilfered jewelry, his thick grey beard had been braided with lengths of copper wire, and his pointed hat was adorned with a tiny golden crown.

There was a pause, and then the gnome commander howled, "GENERAL SCHMEBULOCK… THE THIRTEEEEEEEEEENTH!"

And then the world went completely mad.

* * *

Somewhere on the outskirts of Gravity Falls, well beyond the real Mabel's swiftly-mobilized defences, beyond the two armies now swarming towards the Mystery Shack, beyond the command post from which the Director of the FIA surveyed the scene, beyond the roadways now clustered with armoured vehicles, _something_ was slowly making its way through the hole in the Shroud Field.

 _Several_ somethings, in fact.

Had anyone been close enough to see them creeping into the town, they would have witnessed a vast horde of decrepit figures shambling across the weed-choked gardens and over the cratered pathways. All of them were dressed in the tattered remains of bespoke suits and silk gowns, dust-coated diamond rings and emerald necklaces glittering faintly. Anyone looking closely at the figures would have realized that they were quite clearly dead, and had been so for quite some time: their faces were withered ruins, some little more than gaping skulls bound in rotten skin, others embalmed well enough to maintain a few recognizably human features in spite of their decay.

And when they stepped out of the moonlight and into the shadows bordering the road, their eyes glowed an unearthly electric blue.

At the head of the army, the almost-undamaged shape of a young man marched in silence, a vacant smirk gracing his ashen features. Around his neck hung a distinctive pyramid-shaped medallion – now almost invisible under a thick layer of gore: the young man's throat had been slit from ear to ear. Forensic examination would have revealed the wound to be self-inflicted.

Behind him walked the corpse of an elegant, well-preserved older woman, her blonde hair still lustrous enough to gleam faintly in the moonlight, her doll-like face somehow still intact despite the exit wound in the side of her head. The undertakers had done their very best to disguise the fact that their client had shot herself, but even they couldn't work miracles.

Behind her, the last of Gravity Falls' ruling plutocrats marched in lockstep dignity down the road, the man's moustached grin and the woman's gap-toothed rictus still visible despite the ravages wrought by decomposition - and the car crash in which they'd died so many years ago. Unknown to all but a few, it hadn't been an accident at all. Behind them, their ancestors followed suit, an entire bloodline of once-prosperous men and women marching down the road - all of them pockmarked with the signs of self-destruction.

Had anyone been close enough to hear the horde of undead speak, they would have heard a faint, sepulchral whisper rippling up and down the army's decomposing ranks – the sound of all two hundred corpses uttering the words, _"We return as He commanded; our bones are His to command."_

And from somewhere in the distance, a faint, almost spectral howl of obnoxious laughter echoed…


	4. The Face Of The Enemy

A/N: Aaaaaand latest chapter! Sorry for it being a bit late in the month: dental pain still serving as quite a distraction. Anyway, thank you so much for your reviews!

Northgalus2002: Once again, thanks for reviewing; just one thing, though: that wasn't Gideon at the head of the zombie crew - Mr Gleeful met a much more unpleasant fate by far, and... didn't leave enough human remains behind to create a functioning zombie. As for who the apparent leader of the zombie horde really is, you'll get to meet him this chapter.

Donteatacowman: I know - I'd kind of hoped for a response like this. Suffice it to say that Mabel's become quite imaginatively vicious in the years since Gravity Falls was forced to go into hiding, and decades of defending Dipper from capture have left her a more little bit on the ruthless side. Plus, her clones have inherited her "anything goes" approach to warfare - gladly killing themselves if it means saving Dipper.

Toothpastcanyon: I'm glad you liked that bit! I had a ton of fun writing it. Hope you enjoy the latest chapter, and thanks again!

roylato: This was actually part of an early idea I had for the story, in that everyone in the Mystery team had ended up with a cool nickname thanks to their many attempts at resisting attempts to capture Dipper, but after decades of attrition with so many of the team getting killed off, Mabel's the only one that really stuck in the collective memory of the US law enforcement community. The difference with that and the finished edition is that the team wasn't at work on the "resistance" movement long enough to manage the acquisition of cool monikers, and so only Mabel and Ford (as you'll soon see) ended up with aliases of their own.

Anyway, time's up: feel free to furnish me with your opinions, theories, critiques and criticisms of the typos that creep in at 2:30 in the morning. Read, review, and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: _Gravity Falls_ is not mine. Trust me on this, ladies and gents. I'm not that lucky.

* * *

Struggling for breath, Mabel ducked back behind the nearest wall and let the sounds of the melee outside wash over her in an aural tsunami of explosions, screams and carnage. She'd been fighting for barely five minutes, but it seemed as though the battle had turned in her favour – not because she had any particular advantage over the two attacking armies, but simply because nobody seemed interested in fighting _her_ at present.

For the time being, it seemed as though the FIA were too preoccupied with fighting off Schmebulock's army to focus on storming the Mystery Shack, giving her at least enough time to fortify their defences and prepare for the inevitable second wave of enemy troops; more optimistic defenders might have imagined that this reprieve would last the entire evening, but Mabel had seen her home besieged far too many times for her to accept blind hope: there would _always_ be another wave of attackers, and they would always be gunning for Dipper. So, sprinting out from cover and into the Shack, she made a beeline for the nearest control panel, hastily reloading her rifle as she darted from windowsill to windowsill.

However, as she prepared the gun turrets for the next salvo and readied the copier for another round of shock troops, a question occurred to her; it had been hovering at the back of her mind for quite a while now, pushed to the back of the queue by more important things like ensuring Dipper's immediate safety and avoiding stray bullets, but now that Mabel was finally behind cover, she couldn't stop herself from considering it: how had the FIA managed to breach the Shroud?

Ford's invention should have left Gravity Falls and its forests effectively untouchable, beyond the reach of the outside world barring the occasional lucky poacher tunnelling into the forest from one of the neighbouring towns; and even then the tunnels only allowed people into the Shroud field if the excavations were built at precisely the right angles, with the right building materials, and entered at the right time of day or night – most of which the poachers only managed by accident if at all. Bypassing their defences would have been difficult verging on impossible; punching a hole in them – from _the outside,_ no less – was absolutely impossible. They wouldn't have even know where to aim, let alone what to shoot _with…_

 _Unless someone had exactly the right kind of scientific know-how and magical muscle to disrupt the field,_ Mabel thought, grimly. _Those news reports said the Federal Investigative Agency were collecting magical artefacts… but that still doesn't explain everything. Either they've found a genius on Ford's level, they've found some poacher willing to spy on us, or-_

Suddenly, her mind's eye was suddenly awash with unwanted visions of Wendy, just as she had been on the last occasion Mabel had seen her: cocooned in a sarcophagi of life-support systems, her withered stick-thin limbs entangled in intravenous tubing, her skeletal face sheathed in a respirator mask, her once-vibrant red hair reduced to a few greying, ephemeral strands. Wendy had been at Monoc Prison for almost twenty years, left comatose following her last and greatest escape attempt: by the time Mabel and the others had broken in, she'd recovered from the bullet wounds, the beatings and everything else the guards had done to suppress her… but the experimental paralytics had left her unresponsive, beyond the reach of even Grunkle Ford's genius. They'd tried to bring her with them, but the military had descended on the Island at that point, leaving them no choice but to leave empty-handed

In the years since then, the government had kept Wendy alive, hoping against hope that she might one day awaken from her coma and provide them with all the information on Gravity Falls they sought – though only after generous lashings of torture and chemically-induced honesty. What if, against all odds, they'd actually found a way of rousing her? Worse still, what if they'd been able to interfacing with her sleeping mind, just as Mabel and Dipper had with Grunkle Stan, all those years ago? What if they'd retrieved the knowledge needed to breach the Shroud from her brain – and then killed her?

Or what about _Soos?_ His head had been a ruin of perforated skull and blistered brains when they'd found him – what if this had been some botched attempt to rip the knowledge directly from his head? God only knew there were all manner of techniques that could steal the memories of the dead; maybe the FIA had spent all the years since then trying to translate the garbled information they'd taken from Soos, and only now learned the exact details of the Shroud?

And there were other ways they could have learned the secrets of their defences, all of them involving death, torment and possible necromancy. Candy's disappearance remained an unsolved mystery, and the authorities had been a little too quick to dismiss the deaths of Grenda and Marius as the result of a tragic accident. And as for the aftermath of Gideon's disastrous experiments with magic, nobody could say _who_ had been picking over his corpse in those first confused minutes after-

Mabel shook her head. She couldn't afford to drag herself into another fit of paranoid speculation, not when there was work to be done. Not when there was a Mystery Shack to defend: after all, she'd have to deal with the victor of the current struggle once they were finished fighting amongst themselves and then find a way of sealing the breach in their defences. At this point, it was impossible to tell who had the upper hand: the FIA had the best hardware money could buy and reinforcements pouring in through the breach, but Schebulock's army had the advantage of numbers, Manotaurs _and_ magic.

Plus, after decades of humiliation and poaching, the Gnomes' natural tetchiness had degenerated into a bilious, unreasoning hatred for all humanity that transcended even their natural self-preservation instincts. Over the course of many long and unpleasant sieges, Mabel had seen them chew their way through razor wire and charge headlong across minefields just to get at her and Ford; if it meant destroying the human invaders, they would fight to the last Gnome and try to take as many of their enemies with them as Gnomishly possible.

With any luck, both sides would be obliterated.

With a little more luck, there might be one or two FIA soldiers left alive – alive enough to answer her questions, at any rate.

* * *

Some distance from the Mystery Shack, the FIA's command post glared down at the armies still clashing back and forth across the grounds, its operators surveying and analysing with utter dispassion. Safely concealed behind the barrier of trees and camouflaged by some of Gravity Falls' more imposing ruins, it resembled nothing more than a vague shadow crouched atop a mass of tumbledown walls and rumble, its outline blurred by the all-obscuring moonless night that had descended on the town. To those who were close enough to see the command post, it was a jet-black disc several hundred feet across, bristling with a fiendishly-complicated array of aerials, dishes, transmitters, receivers, transponders and other instruments.

This portable structure had always been intended for military use, designed to be carried into "disputed regions" and prepared to coordinate the air and ground forces of an entire war zone within a minute of its arrival. In the past, the FIA would not have had the authority to command such resources and probably wouldn't have even been involved in the movement to secure Dipper Pines, not once aerial bombardments had been authorized by the president; in recent years, however, the total failure of all attempts to locate Gravity Falls had left the army and air force in poor standing with an increasingly frustrated government. These days, everyone from the National Guard to the marines was needed to keep the burgeoning crises across America from metastasizing.

So it was that the FIA, the only organization with the experience, the knowledge, the thaumaturgical resources and the curiously personal desire to get the job done, had been provided with the men and the hardware necessary to complete a supposedly impossible mission: find the lost town, eliminate Mabel "Bloody Murder" Pines, eliminate Stanford "The Warlock of Roadkill County" Pines, and secure Subject Zero at any and all costs.

Of course, things were rarely as simple as that. As the FIA's Director had often mused, there was more to be done than the President was aware of – more than the President _needed_ to know. But then, if all went well, the commander in chief would never even notice that a change of plan had occurred: he'd be too busy enjoying the immortality that detailed study of Subject Zero had provided... along with the Other Benefits that Gravity Falls would bestow upon them.

Outwardly, the command post was completely silent. Inwardly, the structure was a frenzied hive of activity, with every single control panel occupied and every single instrument buzzing and roaring like a plague of locusts. Dozens upon dozens of technicians sat hunched over a bewilderingly complex array of monitors and controls, hurriedly directly the gargantuan array of electronic sensors from one of Gravity Falls to the next; close by, tactical officers and strategists analysed the information they gathered and relayed it to the front as orders, coordinating squads and vehicles alike as they moved to reinforce the ailing troops at the Mystery Shack. Behind them, another department of technicians and strategists presided over long-range communications directing the next consignment of men and transportation through the Breach in the Shroud as they Gravity Falls for permanent occupation. Other, more scrupulous agencies might have found it unusual that communications didn't have a direct link with Washington, or at least some level of oversight: the FIA, however, had unprecedented carte blanche on its side, and it was prepared to exploit this advantage to extents unheard of in the history of the United States.

And in the centre of the command post, right at the heart of that obsidian disc, an ancient figure stood alone above the ranks of his underlings. His real name was strictly classified, known only to the President and others with official clearance; to everyone else, he was just the Director.

He had clearly once been an imposing man: his aged frame was still graced with broad shoulders and the faintest hints of a once-muscular build, and he still carried himself with the same rigid, inflexible bearing he'd used in his younger days; his heavy, thuggish features were still stamped with the same unsmiling expression that he'd worn ever since his days at the academy. He even had his hair and beard cut in the same fashion he had in his prime, and wore the same off-the-rack suit he had worn as a lowly agent. Age and illness had left him a withered husk of his former self, barely clinging to life by the slenderest of threads, but somehow he remained – too stubborn to die and too bloody-minded to retire, despite the repeated insistence of his superiors (he had no family to suggest such a thing, and none of his subordinates dared suggest retirement to his face). Many had feared that the task of finding Gravity Falls would be too much for him, that the sheer strain of tracking down the most wanted fugitives in America would kill him. But he'd ignored them of course: even if the miraculous events of the past year hadn't allowed him to remember the events of his last run-in with this place, he had allies that other government agencies were too unambitious to imagine – allies that had already provided him with artefacts that could puncture the Shroud concealing the town.

The Director took a deep breath, and surveyed the colossal viewscreen that dominated the command post's walls, taking in the crumbling landmarks half-swallowed by the forest around them. He was back, alright: even after the damage this place had done to his brain, even after the ruination that had befallen the town, there was no mistaking Gravity Falls.

A spasm of pain rippled along his spine, and he reached into his pocket for another pill to stifle the incoming symptoms. He couldn't afford to take this latest onset lying down: there was work to be done here; riches to acquire, vengeance to exact, and a master to serve.

And if he was right…

"Sir, we've got incoming!" one of the technicians hollered. "Multiple unknowns approaching our position at twelve o'clock!"

"Are they Gnomes, by any chance?"

"No, sir; by the looks of things, they're human… but they're not showing up on the heat scanner."

The technician pointed at the nearest surveillance monitor, now projected onto the great viewscreen: there, an infrared shot of Main Street showed a large gathering of ragged-looking figures shambling down the road towards them. More sceptical individuals might have believed that the people approaching them were wearing masks, or maybe custom-made prosthetics of some kind; the Director, however, had seen far too many decomposing bodies in his lifetime to dismiss this as fakery. Besides, he remembered what his benefactor had told him, remembered how his master had chosen to manifest himself during their brief but tantalizing conversations: an entire family of his master's servants – all of them long-dead and still animated by his power – were on approach.

 _So it's time already, then,_ he thought.

"Let them in," he said.

"Sir, they're-"

"That was an _order_ , corporal."

There was a pause, as the command post's heavy doors rumbled open, allowing the frontmost ranks of the zombie horde to shuffle inside. A hush immediately descended on the technicians and guards, many of whom hastily covered their noses or inched towards concealed weaponry – before the Director ordered them back to work, of course.

For twelve nerve-wracking seconds, there was silence.

Then, one of the nearest zombies stepped forward: he'd been young at the time of his death, old enough to qualify as an adult but not even remotely mature enough to claim that distinction (as anyone who'd seen his arrest record could testify). A slender figure in a tailored suit, his blonde hair was slicked back across his skull in a hairdo that not even decay could rearrange, his patrician features still locked in a smirk to rival his grandfather's infamous smug grin; at a distance, he might have almost have been mistaken for one of the living, had the self-inflicted wound to his throat not been clearly visible. And just as his master had said, the young zombie wore His sign: in life, this vessel had only been brave enough to wear His emblem on a tie-pin, but with death having erased all vestiges of fear, he now wore the sign as a medallion visible for all to see.

There was a pause, as the zombie and the Director regarded each other in silence, the decomposing revenant's eyes glowing an unearthly blue as they took in the Director's age-crevassed features.

"Mr Northwest," said the Director at last. "It's an honour."

The corpse emitted a gurgling, rasping hiss from somewhere around throat level in a ghastly parody of a laugh.

"Call me Polonius," cackled the last scion of the Northwest family. "Let's not get formal, Director. Take a load off, relax. All good things come to those who wait. I should know: our lord and master's been waiting for a very long time…"

Polonius Northwest's voice was alive with the power of Bill Cipher, his mind and body a willing channeler of his message. The other zombies were little more than animated cadavers, possessed of just enough converted will to praise their master, but Polonius was unique among all of them: not only was he the first Northwest in centuries to freely and gladly surrender himself to possession, but he had engineered the plan to bring his family back to Gravity Falls to serve in Bill Cipher's grand design, had submerged and altered his own personality in order to be more like the master, had even sacrificed his life to ensure that could not let instinctive fear compromise his service. For that, he was given special privileges to speak for the master and channel his power. And that was only the smallest of blessings that could be granted to humanity; countless other gifts and privileges could be bestowed upon the human race – but only if the Director and the FIA served faithfully.

"Now!" Polonius continued happily, eyeing his fellow zombies with delight. "Isn't this cosy? Just like one of the good ol' Northwest family shindigs back in our glory days! You had a chance to attend one of those parties, didn't you, Director?"

"Yes, sir."

"Thought so. You remember grandpa and grandma, no doubt." He indicated the crumpled bodies of Preston and Pricilla Northwest. "You'll have to excuse me if they don't say much: that car crash mangled their vocal cords pretty spectacularly."

"As you say, sir."

"And you met my mom, too, as I recall… oh, but she's changed so much since our glory days – for better and worse, sadly."

He indicated the doll-like figure of Pacifica Northwest, her bullet-perforated skull nodding unconsciously as she tottered into view. "The black sheep of the Northwest family!" Polonius laughed. "The traitor who let the hoi-polloi gatecrash our beloved annual celebrations! She couldn't even play along with our master when the time came for him to collect his rightful property, even killed herself rather than let Bill Cipher take her into his service… not that it stopped him!" He reached out and slapped Pacifica's dead face, giggling maniacally as her head rocked idiotically to and fro from the impact.

"Ah, but enough of my family troubles. That can wait until later. Now… where's the little **Pine Tree?"**

"Subject Zero has been located and will soon be retrieved," said the Director briskly. "I've already sent in a squad of covert operatives to extract him from the Mystery Shack. As long as Mabel remains distracted by the attackers on the front lawn, the artefacts you provided us with will keep the extraction team from being detected."

"Funnelling your men into a distraction, huh? I like it – so long as you've still got the troops to keep this hick town occupied at the end of the day."

"The president has given us permission to obtain Subject Zero by any means available to us: men and machines are easily replaceable under the circumstances."

"Oooh, aren't those just the _best_ circumstances," Polonius chortled. "As soon as that's done, the Northwest Family's going to need access to the Shack's grounds: there's a statue out there that holds the key to unlocking our master's power. We'll need uninterrupted access to it, complete with guards… and we'll need Pine Tree once you're done with those DNA samples."

"It will be done."

"And we'll also need to make sure that Shooting Star and Sixer are dead, by the way – and by that, I mean _"confirmed kill"_ dead, not _"we haven't found the bodies, but we're pretty sure they're dead"_ dead. Got it?"

"Understood, sir."

"Good. Once we're done, we'll attend to what you wanted out of our bargain. I'm sure your partner will be very happy to see you again, and I'm sure the doctors will be sad to see you away from the oncology ward and all that… but we'll leave that until we've got Pine Tree under wraps, huh? Let's get down to business."

The Director bowed his head solemnly. "I stand ready to serve Bill Cipher in all things."

"Good, good. Tell me, how long has it been since you last met Pine Tree in person, Director?"

"Forty years, sir."

"Then I think it's time we arranged a reunion, don't you? Let's go meet that extraction team…"

* * *

The first explosion sent Mabel crashing forward into the windowsill, sending the rifle flying out of her hands. The second knocked her to the ground, her chin bouncing painfully off the floor as she tumbled to a stop.

 _Ah,_ she thought, wincing. _Deja vu all over again. At least I didn't fall out a window this time._

As she struggled to get upright, an FIA trooper came charging in through the doorway, having given up on the clash with the Gnome army outside; immediately, he levelled his rifle at Mabel's head – but even in her current state, she was still quicker than him. Before his finger could tighten on the trigger, the grapping hook was in motion, slamming headlong into his head and sending him toppling into the doorframe; reeling backwards and struggling for a grip on reality, he looked up just in time to see Mabel's fist rocketing in from the left, catching him a stunning blow to the cheekbone. Hands seized him by the collar and hauled him downwards on a collision course with her knee – which caught him square in the chest, expelling the breath from his lungs in one awestruck gasp. Then, before he could find the time to recover, Mabel drew the knife from the soldier's belt and drew it across his throat in a deadly, sweeping arc.

At long last, the man's corpse finally hit the floor. Fortunately, nobody else appeared to be following him indoors: Schmebulock's people were still keeping the rest of the FIA troops busy. So, panting, swearing and mopping fresh blood from her eyes, Mabel reached for the comlink at her belt. "Ford," she gasped. "I'm pretty sure that explosion came from your end of the building – what just happened?"

For thirty seconds, there was nothing but static. Then, just as Mabel was ready to make a dash for the labs, Ford's voice finally crackled through the commlink: "Mabel," he gasped, "We've just been hit by a covert team. Explosives… demolition charges, I think… They just took out a wall."

"WHAT? Why didn't the surveillance systems detect them?"

"Because to all appearances, they weren't there: they're carrying some kind of magical talisman that disguises them from any kind of sight – they look more like shadows than people."

"Why the present tense? Are they still in there?"

"No… I'm following them. They've got a head-start on me, but I'll be within firing range within two minutes and counting."

"You're doing _what?"_

Ford took a deep, shuddering breath. "I'm following them," he snarled wearily. "I'm not going to let them ruin this now, not when we're so close."

"Wh-"

"I'd just finished the surgery when they broke in: Dipper was fine, the unicorn hair was completely implanted, and I was just about to give him a shot of the Anti-Bill serum when the entire wall exploded. Those soldiers, they knocked me down, blasted me off my feet. I've been shot… three times, I think. Stupid bastards should have aimed for my head… but they got what they wanted while I was down. Even if I hadn't seen them leaving, they were screaming about it all over their comm channels: _'subject zero secure!_ '"

There was a deathly silence as the logical implications of what Ford said clicked into place.

"Oh no."

"I'm afraid so. They've got Dipper, Mabel. The bastards have kidnapped Dipper."


	5. Rude Awakenings

A/N: *gasp* The latest chapter, ladies and gents; I meant to release this earlier in the week, but work and irritations caught up with me first. I hope you enjoy this newest installation, and thank you all for your reviews, favourites and follows.

roylato: I know, it's annoying - but it's the best way to avoid having too much happen in a single chapter and prevent unnecessary clutter. Also, I'm no stranger to long chapters: in some of my more extravagant stories, I produced chapters in excess of _twenty-thousand words_ and ended up scaring off my audience, so now I'm trying to enforce restraint. And yeah, Polonius is a nasty piece of work, and was so even before he ended up sharing a body with Bill Cipher - after all, he couldn't even be bothered to show up for his own mother's funeral; now he's an unholy fusion of Preston Northwest's elitist douchebaggery and Bill's demented smugness. The Director's identity will be confirmed this very chapter, and I'm glad you liked the alias for Ford. Thanks for the review, and I hope you enjoy the newest installment.

Northgalus2002: The FIA Director's identity will be revealed - and confirmed - this very chapter. I love your predictions for Dipper's fate; a good deal of the truth will be unveiled this chapter, and as for where Mr A is... well, I haven't covered what Ford's grand plan might be just yet. It's a dark story true, but there may very well be a light at the end of the tunnel - unless of course it's a runaway train! Thanks so much for the review.

Ghost Man: I can actually picture Ford and Mabel appearing out of nowhere and doing that very gag - thanks again!

Time's up! Game's on! Good luck! Have fun! Read, review, and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Gravity Falls still isn't mine.

* * *

By the time the fleeing soldiers finally appeared within range, Ford had almost run out of obscenities.

He'd been tailing the kidnappers for almost three nerve-wracking minutes, trying to find the right point where he could head them off with an ambush or snipe them down, but the odds were quite clearly against him: thanks to the damage his mobility harness had sustained in the explosion, he wasn't moving as fast as he could have been, and his targets quite clearly had more than a few magical artefacts on their side. On the upside, he had all the weapons he could possibly need to take on an army if the need arose: magnet gun, electro-baton, nerve-flechettes, immobilizer gauntlet, ossifier...

He even had his dematerialization initiator if he needed to quickly return to the Mystery Shack – though the bugs in the hardware also gave it particular flair as an improvised weapon if need be.

Plus, the armour-plating around his heart unit had soaked up most of the gunfire, so he wasn't _too_ badly injured.

 _Besides,_ he thought, as the forest blurred around him, _it's not as if you have enough real internal organs to injure. You're just cyborg implants and aging gristle and metal plates over chemically-preserved brain tissue, and every month there's a little more steel than flesh in there. One of these days, you're going to have to admit that you've lied about just how much of your body's been replaced, and Mabel is not going to be happy._

 _And she's going to be even angrier when she discovers that_ other _little problem you've been having…_

As the spidery legs of his harness carried him unsteadily towards the main road, Ford hurriedly adjusted his cyborg eyes, trying to find a setting that could pierce the veil of obscuring enchantments that surrounded the kidnappers. Right now, even with the forest lit near-constantly by searchlights and exploding hummers, even with Ford's eyes cycling from night-vision to thermographic scanning, the soldiers were still only _barely_ visible, five vaguely-humanoid shadows oozing across the forest towards the safety of the ruined town just beyond the treeline. But despite all those enchantments obscuring his vision, there was no mistaking the tarpaulin-covered shape slung over their leader's shoulder: unless he could find a spectrum that the kidnappers' magical artefacts didn't effect, Ford couldn't take a shot without risking Dipper's life.

And then he saw it: waiting for them on the curb was a small jeep layered with camouflage tarpaulin; whatever talismanic enchantments granted them invisibility, they obviously couldn't work on vehicles, otherwise the kidnappers would have just ridden it all the way through the forest to the Mystery Shack. But as they began hastily loading Dipper into the backseat, Ford saw his moment at long last.

The first blast from the magnet gun caught the jeep square in the chassis, tearing the back tyres off and snapping the rear axle in half; the next struck head-on, mangling the bumper, wrenching away the hood and reducing the engine to flying scrap metal; the third – almost an afterthought by then – hit one of the passenger-side doors, ripping it off its hinges so violently that the door actually clipped one of the kidnappers in the head as it flew past, knocking him cold. The rest hastily drew their weapons and scanned the distant treeline for their attacker, but by then Ford was already amongst them.

Before any of them could react to his presence, one of his spider-legs lashed out at blinding speed, catching the nearest soldier under the chin and catapulting him into the side of the jeep with a sonorous _thud-crunch_ of splintering bone against crumpling metal. Another leg swung out in a vicious arc, sweeping the next kidnapper off his feet; before he could rise again, the tip of the spider leg crashed down on his head like a cudgel, laying him out flat on the road. The two remaining soldiers finally opened fire, but by then, Ford already had the jeep between them and him: a bolt from his immobilizer caught the second-last of the gunmen right between the eyes, leaving him to slump to the curb in a paralysed heap. The very last soldier hesitated, clearly not sure whether to run or stay – and that was all the opportunity Ford needed: vaulting over the roof of the car, he landed right on the soldier's back, sending him tumbling to the ground under the impressive weight of all four of the mobility harness's legs. One jab of the electro-baton to the spine later, and the man was well and truly unconscious.

Idly dusting his hands off, Ford rose and made for the back seat of the jeep; as it happened, Dipper was still unconscious, and probably hadn't even stirred from his slumber at any point in the fight.

And then, as he was about to lift the sleeping twelve-year-old off the back seat, Ford heard the rumble of engines from somewhere very close by, and looked up just in time to see a troop carrier skidding to a halt less than ten yards to his left. A moment later, another transport stopped just to the right of him, blocking the road and disgorging almost an entire platoon of soldiers onto the asphalt; all of them immediately took careful aim at him, presumably only holding their fire for fear of hitting Dipper.

A quick glance down at the supine figure of the lead kidnapper confirmed Ford's suspicions: clutched in the unconscious soldier's free hand was a tiny grey cylinder with a small red button atop it – in other words, an automated distress beacon.

 _Well, I guess it was too much to hope that they'd just radio for help like they used to back in the good old days,_ Ford grumbled. _Ah well, at least they're not going to open fire as long as Dipper's still close by… unless they've got a sniper on hand._

His eyes slid from the surrounding troops to Dipper's unconscious body, anxiously calculating the odds. He still had the dematerialization initiator in his coat pocket: it was only a prototype, but if he could grab Dipper quickly enough, he'd be back at the Mystery Shack before anyone could react… and with a little luck, it wouldn't reduce him to flying mincemeat.

If he could just reach his pocket-

"Don't even try it, Fordsie," hissed a halfway-familiar voice.

Ford very slowly turned, half-expecting to find himself staring into a single, slit-pupiled eye. But instead, staring back at him was the vapidly handsome face of a celebrity heir; Ford would never have recognized the man had Mabel not been in the habit of swearing vigorously at him whenever he made an appearance on the news, cursing him for having failed to attend Pacifica's funeral… but then again, this particular celebrity flavour-of-the-week hadn't been sporting a lacerated throat at the time, nor had his eyes been glowing the distinctive electric blue of directed Weirdness.

"Bill," Ford snarled.

"Not quite yes but not quite no. A little bit of me and a little bit of him." Polonius Northwest tapped the side of his head. "He's in here, Stanford Filbrick Pines. He's in here _and he's laughing at you."_

Ford swallowed hard, hastily suppressing a shudder of fear as he did so. He had to keep talking, he realized, had to make sure that Polonius/Bill kept rambling on for as long as possible while he tried to re-manoeuvre; as long as the deranged bully was concentrating on his monologue, he wasn't concentrating on Ford's attempts to rescue Dipper – and reach for the initiator.

"I take it you've been pulling the FIA's strings, then," said Ford loudly.

"Inasmuch as I need to. Humans pull their own strings, Sixer. You know that better than anyone, _don't_ you? Oh, and I wouldn't bother trying to appeal to the uniformed boys and girls by talking loudly and appealing to their humanity: they've been briefed that you're a dangerous criminal madman and you've nothing to say but lies and delusion."

Ford sighed deeply. "History repeats itself. Not so surprising in hindsight, but do they know what you're planning to do with Dipper once they've finished harvesting genetic material?"

The smirk on Polonius' face grew dramatically. "Not all of them… but I doubt they'll care. After all, he's just a resource to them: the perfect means of acquiring physical immortality."

"And you're… and _Bill's_ okay with them reverse-engineering eternal life from the alterations he made to Dipper's body?"

"Why wouldn't he be? First, these drooling meat puppets have actually got to get as far as properly replicating what Bill did; personally, I think they've got a good ten years of mistakes and stumbling points and academic bitchfests to stagger past – if they're lucky… and in the unlikely event that they really do manage to recreate ol' Pine Tree's longevity, you know what's gonna happen?" Polonius grinned horribly, dead lips quirking upward into a sickening rictus.

" _ **War.**_ Whoever gets the formula for immortality right is going to be a target for every greedy soul this miserable planet has to offer: everyone will want a piece of it, and everyone will want a say in how it's used; the rich will want it kept from the poor, the poor will want available to everyone, the truly faithful will want it banned, and the armies of the world will want to see if they can reverse-engineer invincibility from the same product. One way or another, there's going to be bloodshed, Sixer, and it's gonna be _nuclear._ Bill's looking forward to every single minute of the show – and the afterparty! After all, who do you think's going to be in control once the dust's settled? Who do you think the fearful masses will turn to in the irradiated rubble of the future – a few cowardly politicians and stingy businessmen riding out the apocalypse in premium bunkers… or a _**messiah?"**_

"Aha," Ford laughed mirthlessly. "Bill the Saviour. That'd be a hell of a spectacle… especially if I'm right about the vessel Bill's planning to use for the job."

 _Just a little closer. The initiator's in my hand. If I can just grab Dipper's shoulder…_

"Oh, you'd better believe it!" Polonius cackled. "And by the way, I know you're trying to stall me, so let's just nip that little insurrection in the bud, shall we?"

From somewhere behind him, a deafening gunshot rang out; a moment later, Ford's cranium erupted into a ringing cacophony of sound. Clawing at his scalp in instinctive paroxysms of nerve-jangling pain, he crashed to the ground and lay there, struggling to regain his equilibrium as the agony rippled out across his skull and down his spine, but the trauma was too great for even his augmented nervous system to overcome immediately – and with good reason.

He'd been shot in the head.

True, the plate in his skull had effectively absorbed the impact, but that left the damn thing ringing like a gigantic gong, and every single nerve next-door to it was being rattled to hell and back. And unfortunately, that left Ford effectively helpless as Polonius strode over to the ruined jeep, reached inside and carried Dipper out in a fireman's lift.

"Nice meeting you, Fordsie," said the channeller smugly. "Bill says hello… and goodbye."

He turned to the distant figures of the soldiers. "Make sure he's dead, would you? _All_ of you, if you please. Triple-tap, burn the body, piss in the ashes, whatever you need. TTFN, thanks."

Immediately, his voice was swiftly drowned out by the crunch of dozens upon dozens of combat boots on asphalt as the soldiers rumbled into position, surrounding both Ford and the ruined jeep. The last thing Ford saw – before the platoon closed in around him – was the sight of Polonius drifting calmly down the street with Dipper still fast asleep in his arms.

Ford's mobility harness had just about levered him halfway upright when the sharp _click_ of a rifle being cocked behind his left ear brought him rocketing back to reality; he knew at once that he couldn't afford to take another shot to the cranial plate, not at this range with that kind of calibre.

And then, just as Ford was beginning to wonder if he should have said his goodbyes to Mabel when he'd had the chance, he felt something in his left hand suddenly begin to heat up. Belatedly, Ford remembered the way he'd slumped to the ground, and realized that he must have accidentally drawn the dematerialization initiator from his pocket as he'd fell… and as the smell of frying circuitry began billowing up from his gloved hands, it occurred to him that the initiator's delicate internal mechanisms might not have taken kindly to being crushed against the ground.

 _And there's the improvised weapon facet…_

Without missing a beat, Ford very carefully let the malfunctioning initiator to slip from his fingers: a moment later, it landed on the ground with a computerized murmur of _"Commencing molecular disassembly."_ For three heart-stopping seconds, every single gun in the area was trained on the fallen device, giving Ford just enough time to throw himself as far from the initiator as possible before it activated. A bright light flared violently across roadway, and Ford felt something electric soar overhead, brushing a few errand strands of hair as it scythed past him; a moment later, the light faded, leaving the world around him seemingly unchanged: no portals, no change of location, no fiery wreckage.

And then the jeep behind him very gently fell apart, divided into fifteen individual segments by rampant dematerialization.

A moment later, the FIA troops did the same, rank after rank of uniformed men abruptly dissolving into neatly-diced gibbets as the daisy-cutter teleportation arced outwards.

Groaning, Ford allowed his mobility harness to haul him upright, absently reflecting that his lax safety standards might just have saved his life for a change. Then, pausing only to mop the blood off his face and gather up as many of the kidnapper's artefacts as he could carry, he clattered away as quickly as his spider-limbs could manage: by now, Polonius was almost certainly out of reach, but if there was one thing his cyborg eyes _could_ see, it was Bill's special brand of Weirdness – all of it leading a trail back to the FIA's base of operations.

"Mabel," he whispered into his commlink, "I'm in pursuit again. I'm going to need you over here as quickly as possible."

"What about the Mystery Shack?"

"That's a secondary priority at this point: if I'm right, Dipper's in more danger than we suspected…"

* * *

To Dipper's immense surprise, he wasn't roused by the sound of the Nurse announcing his wakeup call; after three straight days of quarantine, the medical computer's perpetually-nagging voice was so familiar to him that its absence immediately caught Dipper's attention. No, what awoke him _this_ time was the all-too-distinctive chill of _metal_ against the back of his neck: he wasn't lying on his usual heavily-cushioned mattress, but on a solid steel hospital bed.

Groggily, he opened his eyes, immediately cringing at the painfully bright lights glaring down on him; but even with his eyelids slitted against the harsh fluorescent glow, there was no mistaking his surroundings: he was quite clearly no longer in his cells. Gone were the sterile white tiles, the white plastic furniture, the whitewashed walls, the alabaster ceiling. In their place were stainless steel walls and polished metal decks, almost like the crashed UFO he and Ford had visited just before Weirdmageddon – except where the alien ship had been deserted and essentially lifeless except for the security robots, this place _hummed_ with activity: even if he couldn't actually see anyone from his current vantage point, he could quite clearly hear the distant roar of hundreds of people going about their business on the floors above him and in the corridors beyond his newest cell.

Blinking in confusion, Dipper tried to sit up – and immediately realized that he was manacled to the bed.

Now wide awake, he glanced frantically around the room, looking for something – _anything_ – that might explain the situation: Mabel and Grunkle Ford would surely be somewhere within earshot, and if they weren't, they'd have at least left some kind of note within range just to make sure that he wouldn't panic. But no: if there was anyone in the room with him, he couldn't see them, and the walls and nearby surgical trays were bare and empty.

… _surgical trays?!_

"Hello?" he called out. "Is anyone there?"

No response.

"Mabel? Grunkle Ford? Grunkle Stan?" He took a deep breath, struggling desperately to keep the panic from erupting. " _Anyone?"_ he hollered.

Somewhere behind him, a door hissed open, and a blandly anonymous voice grunted, "As you can see, sirs, he's prepped for harvesting. We can begin as soon you're ready."

"Good," said another bland voice. "You're free to begin the process once Mr Northwest's finished with him. Oh, and try not to damage him too much: our client wants him intact."

"Understood, sir. And the stitching around his skull?"

"Remove it. The client has determined it to be obstructive to the reclamation process."

"Who are you?" Dipper shouted. "Where's Mabel and Grunkle Ford? What am I doing here? Why-"

A freezing-cold hand clamped down hard on Dipper's face, needle-sharp fingernails digging deep into his cheekbones as they swiftly forced his jaws shut.

"Hush now," purred another voice. "No need to shout anymore; no need to say anything really – not unless _He_ wants you to." The speaker chuckled, the mellifluous tones briefly dissolving into a shrill, staccato giggle. "So, this is the brat that mother betrayed the family for? _This_ stunted little thing led a rebellion against Bill Cipher? Oh I can't tell you just how disappointed I am in you, kiddo."

Without warning, the vicelike grip on Dipper's face suddenly went slack; a moment later, the hand's owner stepped into view, grinning from ear to ear: a tall, thin man dressed in the battered remains of a pinstriped silk suit, something about the stranger's slicked-back blonde hair and aristocratic sneer seemed immediately recognizable to Dipper, but he couldn't say what. More to the point, even if he'd been in the right mindset to think on why the man seemed so uncannily familiar, the glowing eyes, deathly pallor and the gaping wound to his throat immediately drove all competing thoughts out of Dipper's head.

"Who are you?" Dipper whispered.

"You can call me Polonius," said the man. "As for the finer details, you might say that I'm a representative of a dear old friend. I'm sure you'll remember his name if you put your mind to it… _Pine Tree."_

Dipper's jaw very slowly dropped open. "Bill?" he whispered.

"Oh, _congratulations!_ " cackled Polonius, clapping his hands in mocking applause. "He was starting to think you'd never notice the signs, but you've come through with flying colours at long last! Oh you don't know how happy he is to see you again, even if it is through someone else's eyes!"

"But we stopped Bill! Ford and Stan destroyed him!"

The smug grin briefly vanished from the man's face, leaving his blue-blooded features looking more cadaverous than ever. "So they did," he conceded. "So they did. Trouble is, your dear old Grunkles didn't take into account that Bill Cipher might have had plans to cheat death if the worst came to the worst: your lord and master spent eons trying to escape the inevitable decay of the Nightmare Realm and he wanted to make sure that something of him remained in your world if he couldn't get at that rift – something he could rebuild himself from on your plane. Think of him as a gardener of souls, planting little seeds in the minds and bodies of mortals over the years, preparing them to house the glory of his almighty presence if need be. My family was one of them, an entire bloodline proffered up as vessels for his greatness in exchange for gifts of wealth and power; their bodies were forfeited to him at the moment of their death – natural or otherwise – and through their sacrifice, Bill walks the earth again."

"B-but… but your eyes, they're not-"

"Yellow? Slitted? Well, our mutual friend still isn't back to his old self, not quite up to possessing wholesale. You could say he's a welcome tenant inside my lifeless cadaver – and those of my family – until such time as he's ready to claim a new body…"

A fresh smile split Polonius' face in two. "A new body that, as luck would have it, is lying right in front of me!"

Suddenly, he was standing right in front of Dipper, cold hands fastening around his scalp. "There's a tiny seed that's been growing in your brain, Pine Tree, a miniscule fragment of Bill's power. For the last few years, your Grunkle's been keeping it pruned and suppressed, but now you're with us: now we can let it grow and spread until… well, you've been possessed by Bill before. Imagine the same thing, but permanent, and you'll have some idea of the fun we're going to have. Your body will form the perfect vessel to house his consciousness for all time, the perfect face with which to dominate the world."

There was a polite cough from the door.

"But first thing's first," Polonius sighed. "My friends here have business with a few biological oddities Bill provided you with. Once they're finished sampling genetic material from you, it'll be time to make sure Bill's well and truly settled into that brain of yours… and by then, I'm pretty sure what little remains of your family will be splattered over most of the county, so I'll just make sure you get a nice long look at their pulped bodies – before Bill claims _yours_ for all eternity. And on that note… I'll leave you to get reacquainted with an old friend."

Turning on his heel, the man strode out of view; a moment later, two new figures appeared on the periphery of Dipper's vision: the first was dressed in a white gown and face mask, obviously a doctor or a surgeon – probably the latter if all the stainless-steel instruments he was placing on the trays next of him. The second was…

Dipper blinked.

His hair and beard were stark white, his face lined and seamed with age, his once-imposing build withered way to a shadow of its old musculature; but even Dipper couldn't fail to recognize the bulldog-like cast to the man's face.

"Agent Powers?" he whispered.

"That's _Director_ Powers to you," the old man snarled.

"But… but… you're _old!_ It's only been a few weeks since I last saw you and-"

"Time's more aggressive than you think, Mr Pines. Some of us haven't been lucky enough to spend the intervening years living it up in a specially-designed medical facility cut off from the rest of the world, dodging their obligations and never having to grow up. Some of us have actually had to get on with their lives and hang on to their jobs – no easy task after what your family did to my brain."

"You remember that?"

Director Powers' scowl deepened. "I remember everything, Pines, everything you tried to erase from my mind – one of the many gifts our new client granted me."

"Then you're working with Bill Cipher. Look, Agen- _Director_ … I don't know what he's told you, but whatever he's offering, it's a trick: he's not going to help anyone, least of all you! As soon as he's gotten what he wants, he'll ruin your life and leave you in pieces!"

"Spoken like someone who's never been smart enough to serve him without question… and come to think of it, spoken like someone who's never had their life ruined before. It didn't go so well for Trigger and me after the mission to Gravity Falls: the old director didn't buy the explanation you set us up with, and the two of us got the blame for everything that went wrong out there, and once they were through raking us over the coals, we spent the next five years being kicked from one shitty assignment to the next. Five long years of humiliation and lost prospects and missed opportunities for promotion. Years spent rebuilding our reputations to their old standards… but eventually, I managed to haul myself into the director's chair – just in time for a terminal diagnosis!"

"What?"

" _Cancer,_ Mr Pines," the old man growled. "While you were living it up here with all the joys of undeserved immortality, I was being diagnosed with cancer. Inoperable, malignant, and quite, _quite_ fatal. Oh, and just to prove fate has a sense of humour, Trigger was in a car crash on that same night: he's been in a coma ever since then; both of us with terminal conditions, both of us incurable… and only Bill Cipher can help us. And even after all you did to him, even with only a few fragments of his old power at hand, he's done more for me than any of my superiors: he's slowed the progression of my cancer, he's drawn Trigger back from total submergence, and he's given us the means to find _you."_

"Then what do you want with me?"

"The usual: blood, sweat and tears. You've got a lot of valuable genetic material on hand, DNA that will guarantee my future in this agency – both political and literal. And once we're finished-"

"You'll hand me over to Polonius so that he can make me into Bill's full-time puppet," said Dipper grimly.

"All great acts require great sacrifices, _boy._ It's time _you_ gave up something for a change."

 _And where the hell were_ you _during Weirdmageddon, Mr Great Sacrifices?_ Dipper thought furiously. _Where were you while I was crawling around in the garbage cans looking for food and hiding from the eyebats? Where were you while Mabel was trapped inside the Prison Bubble? Where were you while Soos and Wendy were wandering the wastelands, saving people and struggling to stay alive? Where were you when Grunkle Ford was turned to gold and Grunkle Stan was left to organize the survivors? I'm sorry about Agent Trigger and the cancer, but the rest of your problems I couldn't give a crap about. See, some of us have had to deal with a little bit worse than being raked over the coals in a carpeted office with central heating; some of us had to try and save the world, and if you can't see the sacrifice in that, you're an even bigger idiot than I thought beforehand._

It took Dipper about five heartstopping seconds for him to realize that he'd actually said all this out loud. And if Director Powers had looked angry beforehand, now he looked almost apocalyptic with rage.

"Doctor?" he hissed.

"Yes, sir?"

"I think we should start off by sampling his ocular fluid. The large syringe, if you please… and no anaesthesia."


	6. Thoughts Of The Dead

A/N: Aaaaaand I'm back! Ladies and gents, it's been a while and I certain you don't need my horror stories of hospital visits; anyone who's been reading the latest chapter of _All The World's A Toybox_ will probably know by now. For now, I offer my heartfelt thanks to all of you who viewed, reviewed, favourited and followed.

 **Arya Scarlett 14:** Absolutely. It's just as well Powers didn't voice this to Mabel or Ford, right? The response probably wouldn't have been anywhere near as restrained...

 **Northgalus2002:** The old EyeScream is always worth a good wince, yep! To answer your question, I should be making about 5-10 more chapters; this isn't an immensely long story, and hopefully no further medical incidents will delay it. Thanks again for your review!

 **ImpossibleJedi4:** Glad you're enjoying things - I hope I can keep up my writing standards, and that you enjoy this latest chapter.

 **Ghost Man:** In a good way, I hope.

 **Roylato:** Your "The Reason You Suck Speech" to Director Powers was awesome - and don't worry, he is going to have a very _interesting_ fate.

And without further ado, the latest chapter! Read, review and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: _Gravity Falls_ \- not mine, huge reveal there.

* * *

Polonius did not linger in the command post for long: as much as he'd have liked to witness every minute of Dipper's suffering up close and personal, he had business to attend to on the outskirts of the town, and he could hardly afford to delay it – not even for the simple pleasure of watching the plebeian brat being harvested, not now that they were so very close to succeeding. For now, he would just have to hope that Director Powers would be vindictive enough to record Dipper's agony for future enjoyment, and trust that the cancer-ridden old fool would have sense enough not to postpone the next stage of the operation.

Striding out into the cold night air, he looked around at the ruins of Gravity Falls and smiled, unable to keep the joy from radiating out across his being, decomposed as it was. It wasn't just _his_ happiness he was feeling in that moment, but Bill's: after so many decades spent powerless and only capable of seeing the world through the eyes of his preordained vessels, the sight of this insignificant hamlet – the town that had once been home to his greatest enemies – reduced to rubble and ashes by the relentless march of time brought unimaginable delight to the master's thoughts. Yes, this was a sight that they would both treasure, for Bill's happiness was _his_ happiness.

Perhaps, if they could find the time, they would even be able to befoul these ruins further: Stanley Pines was said to be buried around here somewhere, and his grave was ripe for desecration. Polonius shivered with ecstasy as he envisioned the pathetic lifeless body of the mortal who had once dared to strike down Bill, imagining those ancient bones burned and crushed to powder; perhaps they would even be able to hunt down the few remaining townsfolk and shed their blood across Stan's mortal remains, washing away the ashes in a torrent of red – the perfect revenge… until such time as his soul could be obtained, of course.

But once again, business came before pleasure. Continuing his brisk march down the cratered remains of Main Street, Polonius allowed his newest bodyguards to fall into step beside him as he walked onwards. In truth he didn't need protection, for even if Ford or Mabel were somehow able to destroy his body and prevent him from reanimating, he was still close enough to the ritual site for his energies to be collected… but many hands made light work, and the work now taking place just outside the Mystery Shack was an undertaking that could not afford to be understaffed.

Here and now, he had four guards: two of Powers' best operatives, armed to the teeth with the best weaponry the Agency could provide – including the magical artefacts that Polonius himself had so generously provided… and two members of the Northwest clan, a great-grandfather and a great-great aunt, the names of which he couldn't be bothered to commit to memory. Both of them were paltry shadows of the proud Northwests they'd been in life, little more than skeletons in the tattered remnants of their burial clothes… but their hollow eye-sockets were aglow with the power of Bill Cipher, their bodies reverberating with the eldritch energies that were his blessing.

They bowed their heads briefly as they stepped into formation, paying homage to the new head of the family as was his right. After all, they owed Polonius _everything._ Through him, the Northwests would live again; through him, the terms of their contract with Bill would finally be fulfilled; through him, the shame that Pacifica had brought upon their family would be cleansed in the tide of blood that would consume the world… and through him, the Northwests would at last receive their just reward for almost two hundred years of worship and tribute dedicated to Bill Cipher.

For Polonius was the last scion of the once-great name – the last _true_ Northwest, the first in decades to enact the forgotten rites and serve _directly_.

Once, in the time of Nathaniel Northwest and his firstborn heir, their family had been devoted to serving Bill with their every word and deed. The First Patriarch had been grateful for the secrets that had brought him his wealth, fame _and_ the favour of the government, and the initial contract had offered up the bodies of Nathaniel, his wife and all subsequent members of his family as vessels for Bill's essence… and much more. Not only had those first Northwests worshiped Bill's alien divinity and house the few thimblefuls of being they had been granted, but they had actively furthered his goals on Earth, slowly but subtly preparing the world for the day of Bill's glorious arrival.

Perhaps they might have been able to begin the creation of the portal, given enough time and resources… but then Nathaniel had died, and with the death of his chosen successor the year after, the greatest of the family's secrets had been lost forever. From then on, they had only been able to continue the secret worship of Bill and carry the seeds of his essence. Thanks to the family's numerous marriages and the many bastards that past patriarchs had sired, that might have been enough… had it not been for the actions of Polonius's accursed mother.

The family had all but died the day that Pacifica had bowed to the will of an outsider, their image tarnished and their dignity forever lost in the wake of their humiliation before the eyes of the lowly public. With the only heir having abandoned her duties to the family patron and no others alive to replace her, the centuries-old chain of service was shattered, and on the day Weirdmageddon had begun, Bill had seen fit to punish Preston for his failure to usher his child into the fold (not to mention his overall obsequiousness).

After Weirdmageddon, they'd only fallen further: the glories they could have won as Bill's earthly servants were gone, their obliterated fortune were barely recovered, and their favours and connections all exhausted in their struggle to rebuild. The suicide of Preston and Pamela had been the final indignity, the very moment where traitorous Pacifica had been able to take the reins of the family and corrupt its noble spirit, turning their resources to such repulsive causes as… _charities._

Polonius' face contorted in disgust at the thought of it, even as he and his entourage left the road and proceeded into the forest.

Oh, how dismal the family's future might have been if his mother had been allowed to have her way! Polonius might never have known the noble lineage he was heir to, might never have known the power they might have wielded, or even his own potential.

But miraculous accident had put an end to all that: a drunken stumble in the corridor of the old Northwest ski lodge had uncovered the cache that had revealed his destiny – a collection of artefacts and notes left behind by Nathaniel himself. Slowly, Polonius had learned the secrets that his mother had tried so hard to bury, enacted the rites that the family had neglected for so long, and made contact with the dormant shards of Bill Cipher's essence scattered across the world. Though the shards sealed within the statue and the body of Dipper Pines remained out of reach, he could still call upon those within the Northwest family and pay homage to the mighty deity.

Thus he had received his mission, his calling, his _quest_ to bring Bill back in the body of Dipper Pines – the only appropriate vessel for the quartered deity's consciousness. Step by step, he laid the groundwork for the resurrection, obtaining powerful relics through Bill's advice, making contacts among the darkest and most secret corners of the government, slowly purging his own mind of any elements that Bill would not approve of, all in preparation for the inevitable strike against Gravity Falls.

Along the way, mother had discovered the truth – not much, but just enough of it to fill the contemptible old whore with despair. Polonius hadn't been too sad when Pacifica had killed herself; if anything, it had been hilarious, and not just because she'd been so desperate to avoid being controlled again that suicide had seemed the only way out; the treacherous bitch had actually thought that ending her life might stop Bill, had actually believed that her son would be spared the terms of Nathaniel's contract! Bill had laughed uproariously when he'd learned the news, and Polonius had laughed with him; they'd laughed even harder when the time had come for Polonius to end his own life, just to ensure the inescapability of their pact. The razor had not trembled once, nor had he once considered this final act anything other than a gateway to future glory.

Now? Now he was purified, cleansed of his mortal weakness, animated purely by the shard of Bill's essence contained within his body.

Now he was beyond doubt, beyond fear, beyond death. Soon, Bill would claim the body of Dipper Pines as his own, and with a physical form to house his essence and anchor his powers, he would be free to claim the world as his own… and as agreed, he would restore Polonius to life and grant him the wealth and power that had always been the family's due.

 _And then we'll show this world how to_ _ **really**_ _party,_ whispered Bill.

Polonius smile grew: in the beginning, the voice had been little more than a whisper, just on the edge of hearing; even after the many ritual preparations he'd undergone, those telltale psychic emanations had barely sounded louder than a murmur. But since his arrival in Gravity Falls alongside the other vessels of his power, Bill's voice had been louder and clearer than ever before… and as those vessels congregated at the site of his future resurrection, it rose to triumphant, thunderous laughter.

The message was clear: soon, Bill Cipher would walk the earth once more.

By now, the tumbledown Mystery Shack was slowly creeping into view; Polonius could already see the haunting blue glow cast upon the woods behind it, a sign of the vessels congregating behind it. Around the long-neglected statue of Bill, the long-dead scions of the Northwest Family now prepared to sacrifice the shards of essence they carried, and grant their patron the strength he needed to claim a permanent vessel. All they required was the guiding mind of Polonius to complete the rituals… and, of course, Dipper.

Standing outside the crowd of dead ancestors were the reinforcements he'd requested from Powers, four hundred heavily-armed marines just waiting for opposition, along with four tanks and two decent-sized artillery batteries.

And beyond _them_ , Pacifica stood in the shadow of the abandoned Mystery Shack, waiting silently for her orders.

Mother had been excluded from the multitude of corpses from the moment she'd been reanimated, forbidden from rejoining the family she loved (or claimed to love) as punishment for the abominations she'd committed in life. She'd suffer for her sins long before she was asked to give up the seed of essence contained within her: after all, there were a few vague dregs of consciousness still lurking within her bullet-cratered skull, and Polonius could tell that what little remained of Pacifica's individuality was screaming helplessly as her worst nightmares played out across reality. But there was more that he could torture her with – _so_ much more.

So, as they marched past her, Polonius leaned over and issued a single command: "The boy you betrayed the family for is waiting at the command post; go to him, and witness how enemies of the Northwests suffer. You may not recognize him at first… but you will. You will."

* * *

Half a block from the command post, Mabel ducked behind a crumbling stretch of wall and paused for breath. It had taken far too long to get this far, but delays were unavoidable at this point; she'd had to stop and hide whenever FIA patrols marched by, and as much as she'd have liked to just eliminate them on sight, she needed to conserve her strength and ammunition for the strike on the command post itself.

Beside her, Ford clattered into view. He'd been delayed as well: not only had he had to navigate the guard patrols unseen, but he'd had to patch up his injuries and repair his prosthetics, _then_ retrieve as much hardware as he could carry for this next operation. This in itself hadn't been an easy task, given that the FIA troops moving to surround the Mystery Shack had cut off access to his lab, but, Ford had gotten into the habit of setting up emergency caches out in the forest after the last Liliputtian attack on the Shack; as such, his cyborg frame was now weighed down by a massive collection of weapons, scanning equipment, shield projectors, camouflage emitters, and god only knew what else.

"Did you get those demolition charges?" Mabel whispered.

"Only three, but that should be enough. Any sign of Dipper?"

"None. You'll have to scan the building for that. Hopefully, it'll be able to penetrate the bulkheads without setting any alarms off."

"Hopefully?" Ford echoed. "Oh ye of little faith…"

He reached into the bundle of equipment that had been strapped to his back, drew out a device reminiscent of a small satellite dish, and allowed his mobility harness to carry him to the very edge of their hiding place.

Up ahead, the command post loomed into a view, a bloated coal-black flying saucer squatting atop a wide swathe of abandoned buildings; to anyone else, this structure would have been almost invisible thanks to the surrounding ruins and trees, but Ford and Mabel saw through its camouflage with ease: Ford due to his cyborg eyes, Mabel due to the custom-made IR goggles she wore.

For half a minute, Ford remained crouched at the edge of the wall, sweeping his scanning device over the command post. Then, there was a soft beep from the scanner, and Ford murmured, "Got him."

"Where is he?"

"One of the lower compartments, close to the base of the structure… approximately thirty feet from the outer bulkhead. Judging by the schematic view I'm getting, that's – oh dear."

"What?"

"If I've judged the layout of the command post correctly, he's in the medical bay."

Mabel's heart froze inside her chest. _Oh god. Please, let him still be alive. Let him still be himself._

"What's happening to him? Is he hurt? Is he in any pain?"

"Quite a lot of it, according to the lifesigns reader: heart-rate's registering at 160 BPM, brain activity's going at a million miles an hour, and his nerve activity's through the roof. He's either being tortured, or someone's operating on him without anaesthesia."

"Then that's all I need to hear," Mabel hissed. Reaching into her backpack, she drew her crossbow and plasma projector, fitting the former with a fresh bolt and priming the latter for sustained force. "Whatever's happening to him, we can't afford to waste any more time here. Pack up the gear, warm up the cutting torch and get those charges ready: we're going in – search and rescue as planned. If anyone gets in the way, eliminate them."

"Understood."

"There's just one problem: how are we going to get in without being detected? There's not a lot of cover between here and the command post, and I doubt we'll get that far without showing up on someone's scanner scope."

In spite of himself, Ford offered a ghastly grin. "Let's just say that the FIA already solved that problem for us," he said with a wink, and held up a small handful of silver-and-brass filigreed artefacts. "This is how they caught us with our pants down, and this is how we're going to return the favour."

Mabel smiled too, but not without a bemused sigh. "Do you remember the days when we _didn't_ have to steal from the dead? I really miss those days all of a sudden."

"Speaking as someone who spent the best years of his life salvaging parts from a crashed UFO, I have to say any sense of nostalgia for my pre-graverobbing years faded long before _these_ dark days dawned. But that's just me."

"Oh hush, you old fogey," Mabel chuckled.

"Yes, ma'am."

* * *

By now, every inch of Dipper's body hurt.

Over the course of the hour-long "harvesting procedure," the doctors had taken samples of just about everything they could remove from Dipper's body without actually resorting to amputation: they'd taken DNA swabs from the inside of his mouth, scraped skin flakes from his hands, shaved a sizeable chunk of his hair from the back of his scalp, and drained so much blood that Dipper swore they were trying to kill him. And then there were the things that were almost too painful for him to even _think_ about without cringing: one of the least disturbing procedures involved a sample of fluid being taken from his left eye – with a needle just large enough to make Dipper fear blindness. They'd extracted samples from his bones, from his glands, and according to the doctor's ongoing monologue, they'd even gone so far as to take nanoscopic samples of his spinal fluid and brain matter (lord only knew how they'd managed to do it, given that Dipper had lost consciousness during this little stretch of the operation).

About the only upside to this whole grisly business was that the harvesting appeared to be over… for now. Unfortunately, from the sounds of things, there was another operation coming up shortly – supposedly to remove the stiches around Dipper's head. Of course, this raised another question: _what_ stitches? Dipper hadn't had a chance to look at himself in a mirror, and thanks to the manacles around his arms, it wasn't as if he could check his forehead for stitches. So when had he been stitched up, and why?

Then again, it wasn't as if he was especially short on questions: where was he? How had he gotten here? Where were Mabel and the others? Who was this Polonius character? And how the hell had Agent Powers been promoted to director and aged so much in the last few weeks?

And how long had he been here?

Dipper sighed. No answers presented themselves.

Right now, he was alone in the operating theatre; the doctor had left carrying a crate loaded with specimen jars and vials, all of them filled to the brim with the samples harvested from Dipper's body. Presumably, he wouldn't be back until they were ready for the next operation… and from there, it'd be straight on to being possessed by Bill again… but this time, _permanently._

Worse still, there didn't seem to be any way of unlocking the manacles around his arms and legs, or slipping out of them for that matter: the cuffs fitted so tightly around his wrists and ankles, it was as if they'd been made specifically for him… and while he'd toyed with the idea of stealing a scalpel or something from one of the surgical trays to use as a lockpick, the doctor clearly wasn't an idiot: he'd left the trays well out of reach, and with the bed bolted to the floor, getting closer was well and truly impossible.

His only other option, as far as he could see, was to sweet-talk one of the guards into setting him go… but how? These men were loyal agents, just like Powers and Trigger had been back when he'd first met them. They wouldn't take his side, not if it meant risking jail time or worse.

 _Maybe I can try to slip away from them when they're moving me out of the room,_ he thought. _Or maybe I can do a Mabel, cause a car crash or something. Maybe I can pretend to need the bathroom and slip out the window once their backs are turned… assuming there_ is _a window – and that these people are dumber than soup sandwiches. Or maybe-_

The door hissed open. Dipper looked up, half-expecting to see the surgeon marching towards him, ready to slice his head open and remove the stitching. Instead, standing in the doorway was the figure of woman – tall, slender blonde, and dressed in a tattered white silk gown; as far as he could tell, she was either forty years old or a well-preserved fifty. To his eyes, this stranger might have appeared elegant, even beautiful… had it not been clear that the woman was quite obviously _dead._ Her body had clearly been embalmed by professionals, yes, and her skin had been preserved with such skill that she looked more like a doll than anything else, but there was no disguising the smell of damp earth and rotting meat that shrouded her, nor had the embalmers been able to conceal the gaping hole in the side of the woman's head. And nothing in the world could hide that unearthly blue glow in her lifeless eyes.

Somehow, a zombie had ended up in the operating theatre.

But instead of attacking, the dead woman simply shambled into a corner and went perfectly still, her glowing eyes fixed on him.

Five extremely long minutes went by: not once did the zombie move from her post, nor did she make a sound; she simply stood there, staring at him. Dipper, meanwhile, could only return the favour: deer-in-the-headlights terror kept him rooted to the spot, unable to even struggle against the manacles, and fear had frozen his vocal cords inside his throat, rendering him silent except for the shivering rasp of his breath echoing across the operating theatre.

Eventually, however, the overwhelming silence got the better of him.

"Hello?" he whispered. "Can you hear me?"

The zombie, unsurprisingly, said nothing.

"Would you mind telling me what you're doing in here?"

Still nothing.

"I mean, I can make a few guesses if you like. You're with that Polonius guy, right? The two of you have the same blue light in your eyes… so I'm guessing you're also working for Bill… and you're here to keep an eye on me until he's ready to take over my body. How am I doing?"

If Dipper's guesses had been anywhere close to the mark, the zombie didn't acknowledge them with so much as a rustle of movement.

"Well, I say you're 'working' for Bill, but I'm willing to bet that you don't have a choice in the matter, do you? I've seen my share of zombies before, and usually they don't take orders... but I'm guessing it's different in Bill's case." He sighed wearily. "It's _always_ different in Bill's case isn't it? However he brought you back, he's keeping a leash on your mind. You're just a puppet on a string, right? You don't want to be here anymore than I do."

In spite of himself, Dipper offered the zombie a reassuring kind of smile – though he'd no idea why. After all, it wasn't as if the zombie could answer.

"Come on, at least give me some clue. Hot or cold, maybe? Sliding scales of one to ten? Help me out here. You don't _have_ to say anything, but it'd be nice to know if I'd gotten something right."

Silence.

Dipper took a deep breath – and instantly regretted it: the smell of surgical disinfectant was bad enough, but the smell of embalming fluid, decomposition and damp soil only made things a thousand times worse.

"Look," he said, "Let's just be friends as long as we're in the same room. It's not as if it's going to hurt either of us right? Right? Look, if you agree with me, say absolutely nothing."

As expected, the zombie said absolutely nothing.

"Perfect. Now, my name's Dipper. What's yours?"

At that point, Dipper had been expecting silence, and probably an opportunity to give the zombie a name of her own. Indeed, he was halfway through imagining possible names for his new "friend," when the zombie let out a long, drawn-out groan, suddenly cocking her head to the side as if in confusion.

"…Dipper?" she whispered.

"Oh, you can speak after all. Nice to know."

" _Dipper?"_

"Yes, that's my name. Now, what's your – whoa, _whoa, WHOA!"_

The zombie had abruptly lurched forward from its post, crossing the space between the wall and the table with a terrifying burst of speed; a split-second later, she was standing over Dipper, her cold hands fastening down on his shoulders, her face looming closer and closer to his, her jaws opening wide…

" _Dipper?"_ she asked.

"Mmmmp," Dipper squeaked. "Please don't kill me."

Ignoring him, she lunged forward with another eye-watering burst of speed; indeed, she moved so suddenly and so swiftly that it took Dipper a moment to realize that the zombie wasn't actually biting him, nor was she trying to tear him limb from limb with her bare hands. Instead, she'd wrapped her arms tightly around him, and was now holding him close to her in a strong but surprisingly gentle grip.

 _The zombie was hugging him._

"Wh-"

"Dipper," the zombie whispered. "Never… thought… I'd… see… you… again."

Her arms tightened, and a strange _snuffling_ noise seemed to echo from the perfectly-preserved face. So shocked was he by this turn of events that it took Dipper a full minute to realize that the zombie was crying.

"Who are you?" he asked.

Slowly, the zombie released him from the hug. Then, she murmured a single word that made Dipper's heart skip a beat.

" _Pacifica."_

And in that moment, just as Dipper's mind erupted with a fresh cavalcade of questions, the building was rocked by a massive explosion, sending the two of them crashing to the ground and smothering all further questions with an ear-splitting chorus of alarms.


	7. All Is Upheaval

A/N: Uurrgh. I'm sorry for the latest of this chapter, everyone: I can only plead illness. A little over a fortnight ago, I picked up one of the worst colds I've ever had the misfortune to encounter, and for the next few days, I was pretty much too sick and weary to do anything but stare at my bookshelves and go "wuuuuuuuuugh." Not fun. Sleeping was easily the worst part, given that I didn't so much sleep as float in and out of reality, wondering who the hell I was and why I couldn't sleep. But you didn't come here to hear me grumble about my illnesses; I'll do my best to make up for lost time - ideally before December insanity _**really**_ kicks in.

A hearty thank-you for everyone who viewed, reviewed and favourited:

Guest - good to see you again! Thanks for your review. And you're right: happy endings are in short supply for the characters. Meanwhile, Blubs and Durland will have a role in this story - and I hope it's as surprising as the rest of the story has been!

Northgalus2002 - yes indeed, Polonius is a weapons-grade d-bag. As for how Dipper's going to react... well, it won't be long.

TheFalls: I'm glad you like it so far! I can't promise everything, but I can definitely avoid Karma Houdinis as best as I can. I hope the chapter lives up to expectations!

So, without further ado, the latest chapter: read, review, and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Gravity Falls is not mine. Only the typos and errors that creep in at 2:00 in the morning are mine - feel free to chime in on any you notice, and to furnish me with your many opinions, critiques and theories.

* * *

The explosion sent everyone in the command post toppling in all directions: from one end of the bridge to the other, technicians crashed forwards into their terminals, guards were flung backwards against walls, and any aides unfortunate enough to be walking between workstations went tumbling aimlessly across the wildly-rocking floor. The only man left on his feet was Director Powers: already bent double against the railing of his observation deck long before moment of the blast, he alone remained standing; out of all the command post's bridge staff, he was the first to respond to the explosion.

"What in the name of _Christ_ was that!?" he roared, barely audible over the nerve-jangling clarion call of fire alarms and the distant roar of the sprinklers.

"We have a confirmed hull breach on the lower levels," replied the nearest technician. "Most likely on level C! Intercom links to the bridge have been severed, security systems from sectors alpha through to delta has been compromised, and what sensors haven't been disabled are reporting fires in adjacent-"

"Spare me the running commentary and explain what the hell _caused_ the breach! And someone switch off the redundant alarm system and let the one primary do its job – before we all go deaf!"

Gradually, the clamour from the alarms sank to bearable levels; a moment later, there was a whirring from the control panels, and then another technician shouted, "Chemical scans confirm high yield explosives! It wasn't anything near the armoury or generator, so it probably wasn't internal. Best bet-"

"We're under attack," Powers finished. _"How?_ The MAW sensors would have detected an incoming artillery attack, and if they tried planting a bomb, the guard patrols should have picked them up long before the security cameras! _How could this have happened?!_ What could have possib-"

There was a slightly embarrassed pause, as the logical implications clicked into place. Then, in spite of himself, Powers launched himself off the observation deck and lunged for the closest technician, for once paying no attention to the screaming pain in his bowels. "Give me a thaumaturgical scan of the lower decks and the hull!" he roared.

"But wh-"

"DON'T ASK QUESTIONS, JUST _DO IT!_ "

The technician hastily keyed a series of commands into the terminal. "Scans confirm two magical energy signatures, most likely from shrouding artefacts; whoever they are, they're proceeding along access corridor #3 in the direction of the-"

"Infirmary. It's the Pines again, I _knew_ it! Is the PA system down there still working?"

"Diagnostics confirm it's still up and running but-"

But Powers was already on the move again. Storming back up the stairs to his observation deck as fast as his ravaged muscles could carry him, he slammed his hand down on the security alert button on his overseer control panel, adding another alarm to the chorus. Then, just for good measure, he clicked on the Public Address controls and all but wrenched the microphone out of its housing in his haste to speak into it. "THIS IS DIRECTOR POWERS," he thundered. "WE HAVE AN INTRUDER ALERT ON LEVEL C; ALL SECURITY ARE TO CONVERGE ON THE AREA **IMMEDIATELY**. INTRUDERS ARE WEARING SHROUD ARTEFACTS AND PROCEEDING IN THE DIRECTION OF THE INFIRMARY. SECURITY TEAMS ARE TO CUT OFF THEIR PATH TO THE INFIRMARY AND ENSURE THEY DO NOT EXIT VIA THE BREACH. THE SUBJECT IS TO REMAIN CONTAINED AND UNHARMED AT ALL COSTS. I REPEAT, THE SUBJECT IS _**NOT**_ TO BE HARMED."

Flinging the microphone aside, he turned on his heel and marched towards the stairwell with a fresh burst of adrenaline-fueled speed. Some distance behind him, one of his aides demanded to know where he was going, but Powers was beyond caring at that point: this was a matter that required his direct supervision, protocol and personal health be damned. He couldn't afford to be standing around on the bridge waiting for some shred of good news, not when everything he'd worked for now teetered on the brink of oblivion – not when Bill Cipher was still watching.

If the Pines boy was captured – or killed – in the ensuing fracas, it wouldn't matter how many samples of DNA made it back to the labs intact. It wouldn't matter how quickly the scientists could reverse-engineer immortality from the samples. It wouldn't even matter if the oncologists somehow managed to work out a perfect treatment plan to save him: without the subject, without Bill Cipher's perfect host, the bargain was at an end. Bill would withdraw his favour, allow metastasis to continue unabated, and the cancer would eat Powers alive long before immortality could be made available to him… and Trigger would die in his coma, never knowing how close he'd gotten to salvation. Without their patron, the two of them had a month to live at the very most… and if Bill were to learn that Powers had spent this disaster waiting around on the bridge for the troops to resolve the issue, then he would almost certainly slice that time down the middle.

For now, the Agency had the advantage of numbers and fortifications: with all the charms and runes they'd set into the bulkheads, the command centre was a lot bigger on the inside than it appeared on the outside; external scans wouldn't reveal the entire map… and all around the complex, there were more troops just waiting for an ambush. But even if they had the numbers on their side, it wasn't a guarantee of success for the Agency: in surprise attacks such as these, Bloody Murder Mabel and her team had come out against far greater odds and won.

Whatever the case, Powers was not going to stay on the sidelines for this. He hadn't suffered so much humiliation and pain for so many decades just to have his one chance at a reprieve snatched out from under his nose by some bloodthirsty sweater-obsessed psychopath and her demented mad scientist uncle. This was a matter he would oversee _personally._

* * *

When Dipper finally came to his senses, he found himself lying on his side, his view almost completely dominated by a blank metal wall and a heap of scattered surgical equipment. Unfortunately, he was still firmly strapped to the table: from what little he could see from here, the explosion had shook the room so violently that the table had actually been jarred loose from the floor, bolts and all. As such, unless he could somehow find a way of undoing these manacles, he was no closer to freedom than he had been a few minutes ago.

Overhead, alarm bells shrieked an eardum-shredding drone that echoed hatefully around the operating theatre, swiftly drilling its way into Dipper's skull; sprinklers filled the operating theatre with a freezing-cold downpour that felt so solid it was more like hail than rain... but on the upside, the obnoxious smell of hospital-grade disinfectant was slowly being washed away by the deluge. Unfortunately, that only made the stench of damp earth and decay all the more obnoxious.

Dipper's eyes widened, suddenly remembering that he wasn't alone in the room.

"Pacifica!" he shouted.

From the other side of the table, there was an answering groan; moments later, the impossible zombie of Pacifica Northwest shambled into view, giving Dipper a perfect and utterly unwanted view of her decomposing feet.

"Would you mind helping me off the ground – and out of these cuffs?"

For a moment, Pacifica only stood there, apparently processing what she'd just heard. Then, bending down, she hauled the table upright until Dipper once again found himself staring up at the halogen lights – albeit this time with the sprinklers pouring directly into his face – while Pacifica went to work on undoing the manacles binding his arms and legs.

"You're going to need to look for some controls on the other side of the room," Dipper explained. "I'm pretty sure you can't just break the cuffs open with your bare-"

There was a muffled _clunk_ from somewhere around Dipper's feet as the first cuff gave way.

"…Okay. I could be wrong, I guess."

As Pacifica went to work on the second foot cuff, a question occurred to Dipper, and as the roar of the fire sprinklers and alarms finally began to subside, he voiced it almost without thinking. "Why are you doing this?"

Pacifica gave him a quizzical look, and any doubts he still held about her identity quietly evaporated: even as an adult, even as a _zombie_ , that confused look on her face was almost identical to the one she'd worn when Mabel had tried to explain the concept of sharing to her. And thinking of this, Dipper could only wonder what Mabel would make of what had happened to Pacifica, if Grunkle Ford might have some explanation for how she and Powers had aged so dramatically – and how Pacifica had ended up _dead._ Were they out looking for him even now? Had the explosion been some part of a rescue attempt?

Dipper belatedly realized that zombie Pacifica was waiting for clarification. "Well, you've got that same glow in your eyes as Polonius," he said. "And he said he was under Bill's command… so why aren't you?"

Pacifica sighed. "Tried… to break… the chain," she said haltingly, as the third cuff sprang open. "Still trying now. It's like… the bell, but… worse. Can't stop myself from… obeying… from forgetting everything and serving him… but I can hold onto… a few things. As long as… Polonius and Bill aren't watching… I can just about manage to think. And you… woke me up." In spite of herself, she smiled. "Again."

"Oh. Can you stay that way?"

"Not… for long. Have to hurry… before Polonius… starts sniffing arou-"

Overhead, the distant hubbub of klaxons were suddenly joined by another, far more urgent-sounding alarm. Then, Director Powers' voice rang out across the PA system: "THIS IS DIRECTOR POWERS. WE HAVE AN INTRUDER ALERT ON SUB-LEVEL C…"

As the announcement rambled on in the background, Pacifica let out a groan of mingled anger and fear, and then prised open the last of the cuffs with one almighty wrench. "Follow me," she whispered, helping Dipper into a sitting position. "We need to leave – now."

"But how – where do we-"

"Hole in the wall… we can get out that way… if we can find it. No time… to explain – just follow..."

As Pacifica limped away, Dipper wearily clambered off the table and staggered across the operating theatre after her. But no sooner had the infirmary door swung open in front of them, they were immediately greeted by a deafening peal of gunfire and a chorus of screams from the opposite end of the corridor. A moment later, something distinctly human-shaped crashed into the wall violently enough to crumple the metal, leaving the unfortunate guard embedded in the bulkhead; as Pacifica hastily pushed Dipper behind her, another two guards charged down the corridor, gunfire rippling up and down the wall in their wake.

Skidding to a stop, they frantically pummelled the control panel to their left, barely managing to shut the door before the tide of bullets caught up with them. For a few seconds, the two guards could only stand there, panting for breath. Then, they finally noticed that they weren't alone in the corridor: their eyes very slowly took in the sight of the suspiciously independent-looking zombie and the priceless test subject standing behind her, and even from here, Dipper could clearly see them mentally connecting the dots; then, with a holler of "hold it _right_ there!" their rifles snapped upwards, barrels pointed squarely at Pacifica.

The nearest of the two guards hastily tapped at his collar mike, and whispered, "Sir, we've just managed to cut off the intruders behind security door B-29, but the infirmary's been compromised; the reanimated agent is out of control - she's released the subject from confinement! We need reinforcements to restrain her, before the intruders try to blast their way around th-"

Another explosion rocked the building, setting off the sprinklers again and sending the guards sprawling – and that was all the opportunity Pacifica needed: with a howl, she flung herself down the corridor with an astonishing burst of speed, grabbing the nearest guard by his collar and flinging him face-first into the wall – which he promptly slid down with a groan, never to rise again.

The other guard was quicker, however; easily wriggling out of Pacifica's grip, he drew a shock baton from his belt and went on the attack. Lunging at her again and again, he jabbed her viciously in the chest, in the collarbone, in the face, in the eyes – into every single point he could reach without getting snatched up by Pacifica's grasping hands, pouring all the electricity he could into her decomposing flesh. Dipper clearly saw Pacifica's embalmed flesh scorch and burn under the onslaught, even caught the faint smell of cooking meat, but the zombie barely even flinched as the voltage coursed across her features. For a time, it seemed the guard and Pacifica were at a stalemate, the former too quick for the zombie to tackle, the latter too resilient to be stopped.

But then a door less than ten feet from the two combatants hissed open, disgorging an entire platoon of guards; immediately, they surged towards the errant zombie with shock batons raised. The first few fell easily, tossed aside or crumpled to the floor with a brutal swings of Pacifica's decomposing limbs, but then the guards closed in on her and soon there were too many to fight at once.

"Dipper, run!" Pacifica called, and then flung herself bodily into the waiting guards, sending them toppling in all directions even as more charged in to replace them.

By then, eyes were already turning in his direction, so Dipper didn't need telling twice: taking to his heels, he turned around and sprinted towards the opposite end of the corridor as fast as his aching feet could carry him. The last he saw of Pacifica was a split-second glimpse of her face sinking beneath a mass of black-uniformed figures; a moment later, she was gone.

 _It's okay,_ he told himself. _She's a zombie, they can't kill her unless they try the three-part harmony trick on her; besides, if she's with Bill, they'll want to recapture her instead of kill her… I hope._

Behind him, Dipper heard the thudding of booted feet growing closer and closer, and put on an extra burst of speed. He knew it wouldn't take long for the guards to catch up with him, but for now, he still had a headstart; plus, from what little he could see over his shoulder, the guards weren't keeping pace too well. In fact, quite a few of them were limping: Pacifica _definitely_ hadn't gone down without a fight.

 _Just have to find that hole in the wall,_ he thought. _It can't be much further. How big could this place possibly be? All I have to do is stay ahead of them and hope that they'll be too busy fighting the intruders to follow. And that's assuming that this whole thing wasn't cooked up by Mabel and Grunkle Ford to rescue me. But who has access to this many bombs?_

As if in answering, a third explosion rocked the building: almost over Dipper's shoulder, a bulkhead collapsed with a roar, sending a massive plume of putrid grey smoke billowing out on the pursuing guards. Unfortunately, the shockwave caught Dipper square in the back, flinging him off his feet and slamming him chin-first into the floor. For several seconds, he could only lie there, scrambling for a grip on the polished steel floor, even as those booted footsteps drew closer and closer...

But as he was starting to think that his escape attempt would be over before it even began, someone nearby screamed, and Dipper turned to face the source of the noise – just in time to see first of the intruders lumbering through the hole in the wall. What with the billowing smoke, the murky emergency lighting and the renewed downpour from the sprinklers, it was impossible to get a good look at him at first. All that was visible was a vague silhouette lurching through the hole in the wall; curiously enough, it didn't appear to be walking at all, but half-gliding half-twitching into the corridor… and unless Dipper was horribly mistaken, it appeared to be dragging the body of a second man behind it.

Then the smoke cleared ever-so-slightly, and Dipper saw the intruder's eyes: two perfectly round apertures set beneath a brow as craggy and weather-beaten as an ancient mountain peak, they glowed an unearthly scarlet in the gloom of the corridor.

As the figure drew closer, more features crept into view: a withered, skull-like face, almost hairless except for a vague semicircle of ragged grey fuzz on the back of the creature's cadaverous dome, its leathery skin drawn tight across the bald scalp and jutting cheekbones; a crooked, emaciated frame barely hidden by the imposing trenchcoat shrouding it; a ruined pair of legs held still by a metallic frame surrounding them; long, spindly arms – one pushing aside the last chunks of shattered bulkhead, the other dragging the remains of a dead guard behind it; and holding the entire ghastly thing aloft was a set of gleaming metal spider-legs positioned just above the monster's twisted shoulders, manoeuvring the figure through the crater in the wall with eerie precision.

Immediately, the guards flung themselves in the direction of the intruder with a roar, but whatever the glowing-eyed creature was, it was ready for them. Flinging the dead guard into their midst with a sickening thud, it reached out with a gauntleted arm and fired a multi-coloured beam of energy into the oncoming guards. The effect was nothing short of astonishing: the first simply disintegrated, his body crumbling and dissolving into ashes even as it tried to continue the attack; the next froze on the spot, his flesh and clothes instantly petrified; the third keeled over, his body transmuting into water as he fell and splashing across the already-waterlogged floor on impact; and the fourth writhed in pain as his body began to inflate like a balloon, his veins bulging spasmodically as he grew bigger and bigger until-

There was a muffled _pop_ , and something collided with Dipper at high speed. With all the confusion of the last few hours, combined with the alarms, the sprinklers, the emergency lighting and the shouts from the security teams charging up the corridor towards them, it took him several seconds for him to finally comprehend that he was now soaked with the unfortunate guard's blood.

 _It's all over me,_ he realized with a thrill of horror. _It's in my hair, it's in my eyes, my shirt's gone red, everything's red and… oh god, someone help me._

The figure was now in motion, the spidery legs atop his shoulders moving with impossible grace: one leg shot out, poleaxing an oncoming guard square in the face; another swung across the corridor in a deadly arc, toppling three more; one of the guards managed – barely – to grab the monster from behind, but the figure easily wriggled free with another blast of technicolour energies sent coursing into his assailant's gut, flaying the meat from the guard's bones and toppling him to the deck as a bleached skeleton. Then, the figure turned in Dipper's direction.

For the briefest of instants, Dipper could only stare at the figure as it clattered towards him; it was saying something, but he couldn't understand the words over the deafening cacophony of alarms, sprinklers, gunshots and PA announcements, and even if the hallway had been a tiny bit quieter, he probably wouldn't have been able to hear the figure anyway. In that moment, all he could think were the two glowing red eyes staring down at him… and the sight of the guard erupting, the blood splattering across Dipper, the blood covering him and layering him and permeating him and filling his nostrils with that awful metallic stink…

And suddenly, Dipper couldn't take another minute of it.

He knew that there was something very sinister going on beyond his kidnapping, and he dimly recognized the fact that Pacifica and Director Powers' dramatic aging probably meant something very nasty indeed, but in that moment, he was so far beyond caring it wasn't funny. He was tired, he was frightened, he was confused, he was covered in blood, he was bruised from head to toe from the first impact with the ground, his ears were ringing from all the noise, and he was still aching from the last few hours of having his vital fluids extracted; all he knew or cared about in that moment was the fact that the corridor was full of enemies and the only recognizable ally he'd found had already been dragged out of sight by a mob of security guards and probably wouldn't remain herself much longer – and she hadn't even had a chance to explain what had happened. And now this intruder, this red-eyed nightmare mounted on spider legs, was reaching for him and saying god only knew what, and all Dipper knew was that he _had to get away from here_.

So he ran.

Letting out a noise that began as a terrified scream but ended as a groan of exhaustion, he put his head down and ran as fast as he possibly could in the opposite direction – pausing only to snatch up a shock baton from one of the fallen guards as he ran on.

The world blurred around him: corridors stretched and bent and twisted in all directions, and signposts faded into a meaningless haze as he ran faster and faster until Dipper couldn't even feel his aching feet. He was vaguely aware of urgent, angry voices calling out to him as he ran, but he was beyond listening. Every now and again, a guard would reach out to grab him – maybe from a side hatchway, maybe from the floor after being knocked over by the latest explosion – and Dipper could only dive away from their grasp, swinging wildly with the shock baton, too fear-crazed to even switch the thing on. On he ran, knowing that he was only collecting more pursuers, knowing it would only be a matter of time before someone caught him, knowing that any minute now, Polonius would be there and laughing at him with Bill's voice.

 _I've lost my mind,_ Dipper thought deliriously. _I've gone insane and this is just me running through some asylum somewhere. Better still, I'm dreaming. I'm having a nightmare, and any minute, I'll wake up and Mabel can laugh at me for getting so freaked out by what's obviously just a dream. Because obviously this can't be happening and_ obviously _this can't be real; I can't have been kidnapped, Pacifica can't be decades older for no reason, and Bill can't still be alive, and I'm dreaming, I'm dreaming, I'm so_ _ **obviously**_ _dreaming-_

He was crying, he realized dimly; crying and yet laughing at the same time. Why was he laughing? What was so funny? Why did everything seem so uproariously funny?

From somewhere behind him, a voice finally rose above the apocalyptic racket: _"Dipper, wait!"_

Dipper almost stopped, almost turned around to get a good look at the source of the voice, if only because it seemed _familiar_ for just a moment or two. But then rational thought kicked in again: he had to keep running. There was no-one familiar here, no friends, no allies, no help – apart from Pacifica, and the voice clearly didn't belong to her.

This was Weirdmageddon all over again – that was the only safe way to look at the situation: he was surrounded on all sides by enemies and monsters, his only friend within reach had been captured, and all his other friends were too far away to make a difference. The only resort was to run and hide, and if no hiding places presented themselves, keep running until he found one.

Up ahead, the corridor swung hard to the left, and then Dipper's heart _leapt_ as the fabled hole in the wall swept into view, a gaping crater in the outer shell of the building; beyond lay what could only be Gravity Falls at night – dark, silent, _safe_. Almost shrieking with relieved laughter, he put on one last burst of speed-

And then something slammed into him side-on, grabbing him by the collar and hoisting him into the air. Suddenly, Director Powers was staring into his face, his expression frozen in a rabid, frenzied mask; dripping wet, his hair and beard a soaked, disarrayed mess, he looked as though he'd ran all the way just to make it this far – no mean feat for a man in his condition.

"Got you," he snarled. "I promised I'd deliver you to Bill, and I never renege on a-"

Dipper's thumb finally found the switch on the shock baton's handle, and with one blind, desperate movement, he jabbed the baton hard into Powers' chest. The Director immediately let out a scream of pain and Dipper's collar slipped from his grasp-

And then everything seemed to happen at once:

Dipper flung himself towards the hole in the wall, vaulting over the lip of the crater with one eye firmly trained over his shoulder-

\- Powers lunged clumsily after him, too slow to catch up even if he wasn't crippled by pain and exhaustion-

-and then, _something_ dark and shadowy rippled down the corridor, scything through the two guards blocking its path with almost contemptible ease. It rounded the corner, bounced off the wall, and flung itself towards the hole in the wall – pausing only to plunge a knife deep into Powers' belly.

Dipper had no idea if Powers could have survived or not; by then he was falling through the gap, out of the Director's reach, and as far away from the shadow as possible.

He landed heavily in the grass outside, winded from the impact; clawing his way upright, he took off at a dead run away from the hole in the wall, away from the weird, saucer-shaped building, and into the security of Gravity Falls-

Dipper's eyes widened: this was Gravity Falls, alright – he clearly recognized the buildings and landmarks – but the state of the town was utterly alien to him. Crumbling brickwork, tumbledown walls, collapsed roofs, windows that had been empty of glass for years on end, roadways cratered and overgrown with weeds, stores left abandoned, well-built homes all but hidden beneath a thick blanket of ivy. The church had caved in on itself, its steeple lying on its side amidst the rubble; the bridge was gone, leaving only a gap between the two cliffs; and yes, the water tower was still there on the skyline, but decay and corrosion had reduced it to a bent skeleton slumped on the horizon.

How could this have happened? The town had been intact only yesterday! This kind of devastation would have taken years to complete; what had happened to Gravity Falls?

Somewhere in the back of Dipper's head, there was a terrible idea forming, but he couldn't bring himself to admit it – even if it was only to himself. For the moment, he could only run onwards, too afraid of the consequences of stopping to dare attempt a halt. For another fifteen minutes, he charged blindly across the ruins of the town, tripping over potholes, tumbling through broken windows, stumbling across the rusted carcasses of wrecked cars, scraping his arms, bruising his knees and somehow carrying on, but always a little slower than before.

Finally, he staggered to a halt in an alleyway some distance from his starting point, collapsing against the wall and slumping almost all the way to the ground.

And then the shadow flickered into view, rippling to a halt at the mouth of the alleyway – blocking Dipper's exit. Dipper could only raise the shock baton in a pathetic gesture of defiance, too tired to admit defeat even though it was clearly staring him in his face.

But just as he was starting to wonder if he was about to die, the shadow reached up to its flickering, smoke-shrouded body, and plucked something of brass and filigree from its torso. Suddenly, the figure was no longer a living shadow, but a human woman – perhaps Grunkle Stan's age, if Dipper was any judge: tall, skinny and muscular, she was dressed in a ragged boiler suit and kept her iron-grey hair in a shoulder-length bob. And as she drew closer, Dipper couldn't help but notice the scars on her face, the burn marks on her neck, the ugly craters pockmarking her left cheek and ear, the long lines of scar tissue slicing through her eyebrow, her lips, her nostrils, across her forehead and along her chin.

To Dipper's surprise, the woman then held up her gnarled hands, as if to calm him. "Relax," she whispered. "I'm not going to hurt you."

"Oh, that's nice," Dipper squeaked, his voice on the edge of hysteria. "Hope you don't mind if I don't believe you. It's just that literally _everyone is out to get me today!"_

"Would you mind keeping your voice down, please? We've only just managed to get away from those Agency goons, and I don't feel like dealing with them again soon. I know you're very confused, Dipper, but-"

" _How do you know my name?!"_

"That's a very, very, _very_ long story. At the moment, we're a bit pressed for time, so if you'll just come with me, I can promise you'll be safe-"

In spite of himself, Dipper began to laugh, a long-drawn out shriek of mirthless laughter that sounded more like sobbing even to his own fear-crazed senses. "Safe?" he echoed. "SAFE?! Gravity Falls is in ruins, Pacifica is now a zombie, Powers just drained my blood and tears and lord only knows what else, and Bill's out to turn me into his full-time puppet! How could you possibly guarantee me safety? I mean, what do you even _want_ with me? Who are you? _Who are you?"_

By way of an answer, the woman darted forward; Dipper swung the shock baton in one last desperate arc, but his target was ready for it, easily wrestling the miniature cattle prod out of his hands and tossing it aside. But instead of grabbing him or hitting him or whatever else he'd have expected, the woman simply placed her hands very firmly on Dipper's shoulders in a surprisingly _parental_ gesture.

For the first time since he'd met her, Dipper saw uncertainty on those scarred features, as if she couldn't think of how to proceed. But then she sighed deeply, and began to speak, her voice no longer confident and blunt, but softer, gentler – almost _shy_.

"We saw each other this morning," she said softly. "We watched an episode of _Ghost Harassers_ together, and then an episode of _Duck-tective_. We talked about our birthday party, about how Pacifica was preparing something special for you, about how much Wendy missed you. I told you that Grunkle Stan and Soos had gotten together a whole bunch of exhibits for the Mystery Shack. We played a few videogames together, and you said you weren't going to let your scheduled exercise ruin today… and I said if everything went well, you'd be out of quarantine within the next two days. Do you have some idea of who I am now?"

Dipper paused, and silently reviewed everything he'd just heard.

Very slowly, his jaw thudded open.

"You… you're…"

"Dipper, I know this is a shock, but-"

"No," said Dipper quietly. "I… I can't, I mean… do you mean that…"

For almost thirty seconds, Dipper could only stammer helplessly as he tried to articulate the thought that his brain didn't want to process. In the end, he could only take a deep breath and try again, this time studying the stranger's face in exacting detail: for a moment, nothing about it seemed familiar… until he took in her eyes – dark brown, just like his. The more he looked at those eyes and the face that framed them, the more recognizable those scar-latticed features seemed; in fact, Dipper almost thought this stranger looked a little bit like his mom, except the shape of her face was slightly different. But by now the idea that he didn't want to consider too deeply was coming into focus, and before he could stop himself, he found himself imagining what this stranger would look like a few decades younger… and then the answer hit him – _hard._

" _Mabel?"_ he whispered incredulously.

The old woman smiled at last; by now, her braces were gone, of course, but there was no mistaking that manic, exuberant grin.

"It's good to see you again, bro-bro," she whispered.

Dipper wanted to stop there. He wanted to wake up from this nightmare, to find out that he'd been delusional all along; even if this was somehow real, he wanted to stop thinking about what had happened before he found himself realizing all the other horrible things he hadn't wanted to think on. He didn't want to think of why Gravity Falls was abandoned and ruined, or why Pacifica was a zombie or why Agent Powers had aged so suddenly, or what the monster that had appeared in the corridor had been. He wanted to _stop thinking…_ but of course, he couldn't. He didn't know the answers to everything, but he could hazard a guess or two, and all of them were nothing short of horrific.

And then the enormity of everything that had happened to him seemed to hit Dipper all at once: the kidnapping, the torturous extraction, the encounter with Pacifica, the panic-stricken escape through the corridors, the realization that everything he'd known about the world was gone – all of it descended on him.

Dipper felt his knees buckle beneath him, and Mabel only just managed to catch him before he collapsed.

Then, held tightly in Mabel's arms, Dipper began to cry – deep, shuddering sobs that left him almost incapable of breathing. He could only dangle limply in his sister's arms, weeping helplessly as the horror of everything he'd seen and realized swept over him like the eye of the storm.

He was dimly aware that Mabel was hugging him, telling him that everything was going to be okay. But there was no conviction in her voice, no confidence, not even the joyful spark that she could occasionally summon up whenever she needed to seem happier than she really was; Mabel knew that they weren't going to be okay.

On the contrary, nothing would ever be "okay" again.

* * *

Somewhere on the lip of the hole in the wall, Director Powers let out an agonized groan as he gradually forced the dagger free of his stomach.

Mabel had meant for this little assault to hurt, and it did – quite excruciatingly so… but it hadn't killed him just yet. The cancer wouldn't let him die an easy death, he knew that now. As long as it had an inch of him left to consume, that tumour writhing in his bowels and strangling his internal organs wouldn't let him pass on. But while it kept him alive for the sake of its parasitoid feast, he could still fight it – just as he could still fight the Pines.

Snarling in pain, he thumped his collar mike. "This is Director Powers," he gasped out. "Report."

The security chief was the first to respond. "Sir, we've lost Ford Pines; we think he's punched another hole in the wall. He's lost his shrouding artefact, though-"

"Nevermind that. Is Pacifica Northwest under control?"

"Fully restrained, sir."

"Then go to the dispensary and get me a vial of teratogenihydratexyln. I will pursue these intruders personally."

"Sir, in your condition, the serum could have even more adverse effects than usual; the doctors warned that it was only to be used if-"

"No other options presented themselves, yes. And now we are out of options, so be a good boy and get me a vial of teratogenihydratexyln before we lose any more ground on those terrorists. You'll find me at the breach in the wall. Bring a medic."

"But sir-"

"Just get me the vial or _I'll have you castrated with your own teeth!"_

With a hiss of pain, Powers signed off, and awaited his last option - the only way that he could still deliver Dipper Pines to Bill Cipher.

He wasn't finished yet; he might be on his last few drops of blood, but he sure as hell wasn't dead – not by a long shot.


	8. Conversations And Contingencies

A/N: Waaaargh! Sorry once again for the hiatus: family events ganged up and ambushed me for the last three months. I'm so grateful for all of you still viewing, reviewing, favouriting and following in spite of all my delays. Northgalus2002, Krista Perry, Hourglass Cipher and Guest - thank you so much. This chapter is something of a transition to get us started again - also, a means of ensuring that the chapters don't completely explode like some of my other stories. I hope you enjoy.

Anyway, without further ado, the newest chapter: read, review, and above all, enjoy.

Disclaimer: Gravity Falls is not mine. About the only thing I do own are the typos and the hiatuses.

* * *

It took a long time for Dipper to stop crying, and by then, Mabel was already carrying him away

Truth be told, she would have liked nothing better than to have explained literally everything to him right then and there, but by then the sounds of shouted orders and booted footsteps was already creeping swiftly closer, and she knew it would only be a matter of time before the agency's hunters finally caught up with them. Besides, it was clear to her that Dipper wasn't in any fit state to have any more bombshells dropped on him: his escape from the command centre, combined with the past twenty-odd minutes of flight, terror and tears had left him almost unconscious in her arms. In the end, all she had to do was hold him close, keep him secured, and start running.

Fortunately, the agency hadn't deployed helicopters to search the town just yet, otherwise she would have been spotted very quickly: as far as Mabel could tell, most of them were either protecting the damaged command centre or being diverted to the edge of the forest – presumably to help out the agency troops still engaged in battle with the gnomes. So, for the time being, Mabel had the advantage; with a little help from her purloined stealth amulet, it was more than enough to get her and Dipper off Main Street and into the dilapidated labyrinth of rubble and near-featureless ruins that were the mainstream of Gravity Falls these days.

Once she was sure that nobody could see or hear her, she paused just inside the door of a partially-collapsed house and tapped experimentally at her commlink. "Ford?" she whispered. "Are you there?"

There was a muffled expletive from the other end of the line. "Yeah, I'm here," Ford replied, still wincing at the static. "I'll probably be shaking bullets out of my prostheses for the next few days, but I'm here… and currently exiting the command centre ASAP. Listen, I'm glad you called: I found Dipper, but he obviously didn't recognize me through all the implants because he bolted the moment he saw me-"

"It's alright, Ford, I've got him. Trouble is," she continued, over the audible sigh of relief, "where are we supposed to take him? The Mystery Shack isn't safe anymore: even if we didn't have a hole in the wall and a bunch of gnomes still fighting it out with any human unlucky enough to still be within spitting distance of the woods, the agency will almost certainly be keeping tabs on the Shack by now."

"Hrm. I do have one or two possible refuges left around Gravity Falls that the agency doesn't know about – and even if they do, they probably aren't going to reach them any time soon."

"Wonderful! Where are they?"

"Er… that's the problem. The reason why the agency aren't going to reach the safehouses anytime soon is because they're in the middle of the forest."

Mabel's heart sank. "…oh _god_ ," she muttered. "Would any of these safehouses happen to include your old bunker, by any chance?"

"I'm afraid so, yes."

"And is there any chance that your _other_ secondary bases survived the gnome activity these last few months?"

There was an embarrassed pause on the other end of the line. "I'm sorry, Mabel," said Ford at last, "but the bunker's the only one they haven't ransacked."

"And with good reason! The Shapeshifter is still down there, Ford, remember?"

"Look, I know it's not exactly the most welcoming place in the world right now-"

"- but it's the only place that's still functional, I know, I can already guess. I trust you've been keeping it maintained and stocked?"

"Absolutely. It'll be safe so long as we don't stray too deep into the lower levels."

"And as long as the power generators don't break down from neglect. Again."

"That happened exactly _once!"_

"Twice, Grunkle Ford. I remember the second time well enough because it took a full week before my hearing was back to normal, another three before I was able to turn my head to the right again, and about five months before I could walk without creaking."

"Good gravy, you act as though I couldn't repair the damage. Speaking of which, how are your joints feeling?"

"Well, I don't have any pain in my elbows or knees, so the cartilage restoration's still going strong. With that in mind, it shouldn't be too hard to get Dipper over to the bunker by the time you've finished getting the place up and running. With any luck, Schmebulock isn't using my route as a thoroughfare. In the meantime, once you've gotten the external defences online, prep the surgery; we need to make sure those agency bastards didn't do any serious damage to Dipper. Oh, and make sure the Shapeshifter doesn't start thawing out while you're at it."

"Yes, Ma'am," Ford quipped, and promptly signed off with another ear-stinging burst of static.

The noise must have been louder than anticipated, for as Mabel crept out of hiding, Dipper stirred in her arms. "Where… where are we going?" he murmured sleepily, eyes opening ever-so-slightly.

"Someplace safe," Mabel assured him.

"But what… what's…"

Dipper's eyelids fluttered wildly as he struggled to regain consciousness, without much success; now that the adrenaline of the last few minutes had finally worn off, the side-effects of the medical anaesthesia were already reasserting themselves.

"What's happening?" he mumbled at last, and once again Mabel heard the fear and grief building in her brother's voice. "…doesn't make sense, Mabel… none of it makes sense… I need you to… explain it to me…"

"I will; trust me, everything's going to make sense, just as soon as we get to safety, okay? Then I'll tell you everything, I promise."

Dipper sighed wearily, fading back into unconsciousness once again. "Wanna go home," he whimpered. Then, just as quickly as he'd awoken, he was asleep.

Not for the first time that day, Mabel had to stop for a minute and take a deep breath before the enormity of what she had to do overwhelmed her. She'd already revealed the truth to Dipper, but now she had to bring him up-to-date with everything; how the hell was she supposed to tell him that there _was_ no home anymore? How was she supposed to tell him that his parents, his best friends, his crush, even Grunkle Stan were all dead or worse?

And in the end, she could once again only sigh deeply and resolve to deal with that little catastrophe when she actually _could_. For now, she had to make her way to the bunker and hope that there it would be safe enough to reveal everything… and that Dipper would be able to cope with it.

 _He'll be fine,_ she told herself. _He's dealt with situations just as bad, if not worst. He was at ground zero of the apocalypse, remember? He survived Weirdmageddon for three straight days while the rest of Gravity Falls was being petrified and dragged off to the Fearamid. Once he's had some time to get his bearings and digest everything, he'll be okay. It's what's going to happen afterwards that should_ really _worry you…_

And somehow, Mabel would have felt so much better if she'd actually been able to believe a word of her own rationalizations.

Sighing, she held Dipper close once again and took off running as quickly as her well-worn legs could carry her.

* * *

"Is this going to take much longer?"

"Just finishing the final stitches, sir. The serum will be ready within minutes."

Director Powers leant back against the bulkhead and muttered a few less-than-directorial words. He'd had to do a great many undignified things in his lifetime, including some of the more surreal moments he'd spent undercover, but none of them were quite as embarrassing as having to sit in full few of his men as a blank-faced orderly sewed up the hole in his guts. As director, a certain degree of poise and isolation was required of him in public, and few things spoiled this façade more thoroughly than being left slumped in a hallway, badly-wounded, shirtless and covered in blood while bewildered agents stared at him. But it had to be done.

True, sewing up his belly wouldn't do much at this point: Bloody Murder Mabel had proved herself worthy of her moniker more than a thousand times over in the last few hours, and her last bit of evidence had left Director Powers with more than enough internal damage to leave him out of commission for the next five months – at _least_. Needless to say, Powers couldn't afford to spend any more time in a hospital bed, not when there was an important retrieval operation to take charge of.

And the duty of capturing Dipper would have to be performed by Powers himself – not his deputies, not his operatives, but _him_.

Polonius Northwest would not accept excuses.

 _Bill Cipher_ would not accept excuses.

The punishment for losing the subject would be terrible enough on its own, but if it was discovered that Powers had been lying in a hospital bed while his hunters were out searching for Dipper Pines… well, even if they did find him, Bill would exact more than just a pound of flesh in payment for laxity. The way he saw it, Powers had two black marks on his record so far: the failure to anticipate the attack on the command centre, and his equally disastrous failure to prevent the escape/rescue attempt. The only way to wipe the slate clean and ensure that he would still receive the gifts that he had been promised would be to – once again – deal with the situation personally, ideally before Bill realized that his chosen vessel had escaped.

Hence, the serum.

Bill had been generous indeed with his blessings. Among the priceless artefacts donated by Polonius Northwest in the early days of his partnership with the agency had been a sealed urn, over eight thousand years old and filled to the brim with a strange fluid. Chemical analysis indicated that this substance was mutagenic in nature, and – much more surprisingly – somehow still as potent as it had been on the day it had first been contained. Tests of the liquid's effect on living organisms had been nothing short of remarkable, imbuing test subjects with brief-but-astronomical boosts in strength, speed, stamina, and regeneration, along with more than enough superficial mutations to do the work of an entire psychological warfare division; in fact, the less-cooperative subjects had been so empowered by the process that it had taken the combined efforts of an entire company of heavily-armed soldiers to subdue them long enough for the substance to wear off.

According to Polonius, this fluid (which had been classified as teratogenihydratexyln, or "the serum" for brevity's sake) had been meant exclusively for use by their most-trusted agents, ideally if eliminating Mabel or Stanford Pines proved impossible via normal methods – always a possibility considering the latter's cybernetic augmentation and the sheer ruthlessness of the former. But now…

The medics had warned Powers there would be side-effects, yes. The regenerative effects of the serum didn't distinguish between healthy cells and cancerous tissue: he'd seen the autopsy reports on some of the less-than-fortunate test subjects, the ones who'd been admitted to the test chamber with a skin lesion or two at the most and left at stage 4 – if they left at all. Metastasis was inevitable, prolonged and insidious, for as long as the serum was active, users wouldn't notice anything amiss with their bodies; it was until the effects wore off that the newly-expanded cancer became truly devastating.

At this late stage of his condition, Powers would be courting death by taking the serum: if he didn't find Dipper before it wore off, Bill's vengeance would be the least of his worries; at best, the metastasis would leave him with days to live – and at worst, _hours_.

But if he succeeded… well, the reward would be more than worth the risk. Once Bill had claimed the body of Dipper Pines as his own and regained all his old abilities, he would have it within his power to halt the cancer's progression, even reverse it. Powers wouldn't need much time in the long run, just long enough for the geneticists to finish their work on the immortality treatment and guarantee Powers' indefinite survival.

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained," he grumbled.

"Sir?"

"Nothing. Are we ready for the injection?"

"We can begin immediately, sir… but I still think you should leave the task of finding the subject to Agent Kierke and his-"

"Objection noted," Powers snarled. "Now give me the damned shot and stop wasting my time."

Nodding obediently, the medic reached into the briefcase by his side and, as his assistant began prepping Powers' arm for the injection, drew out the vial of oily black serum that was now his sole means of achieving victory.

He barely felt the sting of injection; if anything, all he felt was a faint chill as the needle slid cleanly through his flesh. But as the plunger descended, Powers swore he could see the veins in his arms turn pitch-black as the serum raced through his bloodstream. And then…

Then there was pain – of a sort, a boiling caustic burn rippling across his extremities, harsh enough to draw a hiss from his lungs but not strong enough to elicit a scream. Then, there was merely a tingling, bubbling sense of discomfort as the first charges made themselves known, as bones temporarily shifted beneath his skin and unnatural shapes oozed from his flesh like rising dough.

The onlookers drew back in horror, and the medic dropped the syringe with a gasp as his former patient slowly rose from his seat, now sporting appendages heretofore unseen in nature.

But Powers only smiled – a smile that began on his face and stretched almost to the back of his skull, an all-encompassing picket fence of jagged fangs. His eyes were open now, truly open to his place in Bill Cipher's plan; yes his eyes were opening from head to toe, new ocular growths staring out at the world with tiny triangular pupils the colour of burnished gold. Muscles like steel cables rewove themselves across his body, and bones that had previously been as brittle as old clay now grew stronger than steel… and as Powers' maw gaped open with sick elation, new sensory organs sparked into life, swiftly tracing the path of Dipper Pines across the corridor, out through the hole in the wall, and into Gravity Falls.

A mad, giddy laugh escaped his jaws. Bill had truly favoured him with his blessings by granting him this serum when they'd cemented their alliance; he'd given Powers his trust, and in return, Powers would give him the perfect vessel. Dipper Pines was out there, and now there was no escaping his true master's reach.

Oh yes, Bill would have his prize.

* * *

Dipper wasn't sure when he awoke or what had roused him; he didn't recognize his surroundings, nor did he remember how he'd found himself here.

Truth be told, he wasn't really awake: his eyes were halfway open and he was dimly aware of his surroundings, but his body seemed too heavy for him to rise, his mind too lethargic to really take in the world around him. For the time being, he was hovering on the border between sleeping and full consciousness, always fading back into slumber just when he was on the verge of becoming wide awake. Every now and again, his memory would stir and remind him that something important was meant to happen, or that something earth-shattering had occurred in the last few hours, but every time he tried to remember exactly what he needed to know, it all went slipping through his fingers like sand through a strainer.

 _Don't worry about it,_ he told himself. _Just enjoy this while it lasts. Any minute now, mom's going to knock on the door and wake you for school. So don't bother trying to remember. Don't think about it: just lie here and sleep while you can. Just sleep…_

And for a while, he did.

He lay, happily drifting in and out of consciousness, aware of the pillow beneath his head and the blankets layering him, but of precious little else. And he stayed that way for quite some time – up until a voice from somewhere just beyond the fog of lethargy abruptly shattered his reverie.

"Jesus, Ford," said the voice. "Would it have hurt you to have tidied this place up?"

He knew the owner of this voice. He couldn't say how, but he knew the speaker's name. Somewhere amidst the fog shrouding Dipper's head, connections were already being made: he didn't know how, but this tired, well-worn voice was somehow linked to Mabel.

 _No, no, don't think about it! Just lie still and sleep. The more you think about it, the worse it'll get!_

Another voice spoke up. "Under the circumstances, it's as clean as it can possibly get. Besides, we shouldn't need to conduct any further surgery, so it's not like we've any great need for a sterile environment."

Once again, the faint sting of familiarity: he'd heard this voice not long ago, amidst blaring klaxons, gloomy emergency lighting and the icy downpour of sprinklers, a voice calling out for him to wait, somehow making itself heard even over the screams of dying men… and it had sounded familiar then, too, almost as if-

 _Don't think about it you idiot! You'll only regret it. Now just close your eyes and let yourself drift back to sleep._

"Little bit presumptuous aren't we?" said the first voice. "We _shouldn't_ need it, just like those agency goons _shouldn't_ have been able to break through the barrier, just like the agency _shouldn't_ have been able to get its hands on magical artefacts, just like Bill Cipher _shouldn't_ have been able to come back from the dead. Need I go on?"

 _Bill Cipher?_

And just like that, everything came flooding back, every single memory he'd been doing his best to keep repressed in sleep suddenly galloping into the forefront of his brain: the sickness, the quarantine, waking up in the operating theatre, meeting Polonius and Director Powers, the realization that Bill was somehow still active, the encounter with the inexplicably-older Pacifica, the harrowing escape… and then meeting Mabel – aged and scarred almost beyond recognition. And now there was no stopping the thought that had hijacked his brain in that moment: _I wasn't in quarantine for a few days; I was in quarantine for_ _ **years.**_

Suddenly wide awake, Dipper sat bolt upright, frantically scanning his surroundings for something – _anything –_ that could somehow force this nightmare to make sense. He took in the cramped quarters, the cobwebbed shelves overhead, the corroding pipework squatting in the corner, the moth-eaten mattress he'd been sleeping on… and long before he noticed the WARNING: FALLOUT SHELTER poster sitting on the wall, he already knew he'd found himself in the bunker.

How could he forget this place after everything that had happened here? The search for the Author, the battle with the Shapeshifter, the confession of his feelings for Wendy – no, too much had transpired for him to banish this place from his brain.

But he wasn't alone here. Sitting on the floor just a few feet away were two figures: the first was Mabel – still in her late fifties, still raked with dozens of scars, and wearing a clothes so drab and dull that it only made her look even more alien; after having seen her wearing gaudy sweaters for most of their childhood, seeing her in battered coveralls was even more bewildering than seeing her aged and battlescarred.

And sitting next to her was-

A withered corpse in a trenchcoat stared back at him with eyes of burning scarlet, its shoulders bristling with gleaming metal spider legs. It took all of three seconds for Dipper to recognize the monster that had appeared in the corridor during his escape from the agency; heart hammering, he lurched backwards across the mattress until he was pressed tight against the bunker wall, mouth opening wide and ready to scream-

"It's alright!' Mabel shouted, hurrying over to his side. "It's alright, Dipper! There's nothing to be afraid of; you're perfectly safe."

Dipper felt Mabel's hand on his shoulder, and instantly latched on to it like a drowning sailor making a grab for the last bit of flotsam in a stormy sea. "B-but," he stammered, "But I – he – what…" Too flabbergasted to speak intelligibly, he could only point at the figure hunched in the corner, trusting that things would start making sense if Mabel was here.

But instead, the withered figure got to its feet and slowly approached, arms out in a placating gesture. "Don't be afraid, Dipper," it said. "It's me. I know I've changed a lot, but I know you can recognize my voice; that hasn't changed much in the last few decades."

Dipper blinked. Once again, he couldn't keep himself from making the connection: once again, the voice was indeed familiar… and once he looked past the glowing mechanical eyes, the ragged scar tissue and the hairless scalp, the profile was still distinctive – even without the glasses.

" _Grunkle Ford?!"_ he shrieked.

Ford nodded silently.

"But… how? Your eyes! Those spider-things!"

"Time," said Ford simply. "It doesn't stop for anyone, I'm afraid… not that the rest of the world believes it, though." He offered an awkward smile, revealing teeth too smooth and polished to be real. "It's good to see you again, Dipper."

Dipper finally let the breath he'd been holding for the last minute, and realized he was on the verge of tears again. "Could… could someone _please_ explain things?" he asked. "I… nothing makes sense anymore, and I just need to know what's going on. Please?"

Mabel patted him reassuringly on the shoulder. "I'll do my best, I promise. Where do you want to begin?"

Dipper thought for a moment. "How long has it been?"

"What do you mean?"

" _How long has it been since I started quarantine?"_

Mabel's reassuring grip on his shoulder briefly tightened. "Forty-three years," she replied at last.

"And… I didn't age all that time because of Bill's mark, right?" His hand flew to the livid blemish at the back of his neck, itching furiously at the mark of ownership tattooed across his nape. "Powers said I was immortal – that was why Bill and the agency wanted me; is that right?"

Mabel nodded.

Dipper took a deep breath. This was the part he'd been dreading ever since the first inklings of the truth dawned on him… but he had to know, for the sake of his own sanity if nothing else.

"Where are the others?" he asked quietly. "Grunkle Stan, Soos, Wendy – where are they?"

But Dipper could already tell from the aggrieved looks on Ford and Mabel's faces that the answer was going to be terrible.

"Are they still alive?" he asked.

Silence.

"What about Mom and Dad? Are they…"

Mabel shook her head. "I'm sorry, Dipper."

This time, Dipper couldn't even cry: he'd already had a sneaking suspicion that he'd lost friends and family, especially once Pacifica had showed up as a zombie; besides, he was too worn-out from everything that had happened in the last few hours – the terror, the confusion, the lingering effects of the sedative – to do anything more than sag in exhaustion.

"Tell me everything," he said at last. "What happened to me, what happened to you two, what happened to our friends… and if there's anything we can do about it." His spirits dipped further, and he added, "Even if there's nothing to be done."

"Are you sure?"

"Mabel, I'm done being clueless. I just want to know what happened to my life – to _everything_ in the last few decades. Please: don't hold anything back. Tell me _everything."_

Mabel sighed and sat down on the bed beside him. "Alright," she said. "If you're sure." She took a deep breath, and began in earnest. "It all started right after Weirdmageddon; you remember how the mark first appeared and you started getting sick? Well, it wasn't long before we noticed the _real_ symptoms..."

* * *

Polonius frowned, silently crushing his cellphone under his heel. Something was quite clearly wrong.

He'd no idea why. Dipper was in captivity and almost fully-harvest; Shooting Star and Sixer were on the ropes; the Mystery Shack was locked down; and with the area around the statue completely secured, it was almost time to begin the ritual: the first of the family bastards were now ready to sacrifice their corporeal existence to fuel Bill Cipher's resurrection and pave the way for his eventual possession of Dipper Pines, the perfect vessel.

So why did he feel so… uneasy?

It was true that Dipper hadn't been released into his custody yet, Pacifica hadn't returned from the command centre, and the two troublemakers hadn't been put down just yet, but… well something had to be wrong if Director Powers wasn't answering his calls.

The realization hit him very suddenly: the teratogenihydratexyln.

Ever since the serum had been first contained, it had been enchanted with spells to allow Bill and his loyal servants to sense its usage – to weed out faithless followers who abused his gifts. It was for this reason that Polonius could sense its power in use, by none other than Director Powers. For some reason, the serum was in use over at the command centre; by rights, that special potion should only be used in the direst of emergencies and never by the Director.

Something had gone horribly wrong – and was poised to get worse. Director Powers was not playing according to the rules.

Fortunately, he'd claimed a few additional operatives among the ranks of the agency for just such an eventuality. Reaching into his pocket, he drew out a FIA-issue commlink, and keyed in a few well-chosen numbers.

A moment later, there was a muffled query from the other end of the line.

"You already know who this is, Lieutenant Waltramm," Polonius replied.

There was a pause, and then the Director's resident hatchet-man offered his profoundest apologies.

"That's what I like to hear. Now, I'm getting a funny feeling that things aren't going well over there. I don't expect you to answer me honestly, not while your boss is still alive and enforcing his little rules against emergency non-disclosure… but I do expect to get the services I paid for. Director Powers isn't answering his phone and his secretary isn't taking calls, so it's up to you to make sure things run smoothly."

Muffled sounds of vague agreement echoed from the commlink speaker.

"Good boy. If the situation is as bad as I suspect and Director Powers doesn't return from his little fox-hunt, we'll need to enact the contingency plan we talked about. Get down to communications and send word to Monoc Prison: tell them it's time for our special prisoner to be moved. They don't need to know where – just inform them that it's imperative that she be transferred to your care immediately."

The commlink squawked in confusion.

"Isn't it obvious? _I'll_ be looking after her. No need to bother yourself with preparing a cell. Now get to work: I want the prisoner on a helicopter flight here within the hour. It's time that Wendy Corduroy returned to Gravity Falls…"


	9. Powering Through Problems

A/N: Aaaand we are back at long last. Thank you to all who viewed, reviewed, favourited and followed! I'm trying to cut down on opening comments, so I'm just going to go straight to the story: read, review and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Gravity Falls is not mine. Trust me on this.

* * *

It took the better part of an hour for Mabel and Ford to explain everything to Dipper, and by the end of it, all three of them were on the verge of collapse. Even Mabel, who'd almost grown numb to the tragedies of the last forty years, caught herself tearing up at several points throughout the long, harrowing story. For most of it, though, Dipper hadn't said a word: he'd just sat there, looking more and more despairing as the explanations had continued, until he'd stopped reacting at all.

Now he sat in silence, hollow-eyed and ashen-faced as the echoes slowly died away. It had been a _very_ long time since Mabel had last seen anything close to that expression on her brother's face, and back then, it had been during their final showdown with Gideon on the cliff. Back then, Dipper had been defeated in almost every possible way and left with nothing… and yet, he'd still managed to rally and snatch an unlikely victory even with a giant robot pitted against him. Now, though, it didn't even look possible for Dipper to recover from what he'd just seen and heard.

What would happen next? Would he break down completely, retreat from the awful reality into a catatonic coma? Or would he just lapse into denial and refuse to believe what he'd been told? That had happened before during the quarantine days, on the rare occasions that Mabel's conscience had gotten the better of her. This time, though, there was no way of denying the evidence of his own eyes – not while Bill and his pawns were still hunting for him… which could mean that Dipper might try something even worse.

For almost a minute, Dipper remained perfectly silent, looking from Mabel to Ford as he visibly tried to work out what to say. Then, he cleared his throat, and finally spoke:

"So," he said hoarsely. "I'm immortal, I haven't aged for the last forty years, and it's all because of Bill. You're both wanted fugitives. Everyone we've ever known and loved is dead. And now Bill wants to make me into a host he can use to come back from the dead and take over the world. Plus he's got the zombie Northwest family and an entire government agency here to help out. Does that about sum everything up, or is there something even _worse_ I forgot about?"

"No," said Ford quietly. "That's about the long and short of it."

Dipper very quietly closed his eyes, and for a moment, Mabel thought he was about to start crying again. But when he finally opened his eyes again, he was calm again – or at least, as calm as he could be under the circumstances.

"Okay," he said, audibly suppressing a tremor in his voice. "So what are we going to do about it?"

Mabel was immediately torn: on the one hand, she was relieved that Dipper had recovered so quickly, but on the other, he was clearly doing his best to suppress his grief and anxiety, wasn't he? No matter how brave a face he put on it, there was only so much the human brain could take before it snapped… and so far, neither of them had much in the way of good news.

Ford was the first to speak up: "Well, as long as that unicorn hair's still stitched around your scar, we've already prevented Bill from seizing control of you. So, while we have that advantage, we destroy Bill's mark and purge the parts of your brain that he's corrupted; once that's done, he won't be able to use you as a host."

"And how do we do that?"

"Well, I've already created several varieties of serum to keep the malign influence in your brain from spreading: while no additional support from Bill, the newest serum should be able to remove it entirely."

Dipper's eyes narrowed. "So why haven't we tried that already?" he asked suspiciously.

"I already did back when I installed the stitching. Trouble is, those soldiers broke in and kidnapped you before I could administer the dose. Plus, I didn't have time to grab a fresh vial once I started chasing after them, and I don't have any facilities to synthesize a fresh batch down here in the Bunker. So, if we want to properly immunize you against Bill, we need-"

"-to go back to the Mystery Shack," Mabel finished wearily. "Right next-door to the lion's den. _Of course_ it couldn't be easy. In other words, we have to find a way past every single member of the Northwest family _and_ their military escorts just to get in through the hole in the wall!"

"And that's the other thing I meant to ask," said Dipper. "Assuming we can sneak back to the Mystery Shack, _what are we going to do once I've been injected?"_

Ford blinked. "Beg pardon?"

"Well, you say Bill won't be able to use me as a host anymore, but he isn't going to just go away once that's over and done with, is he? He's still got all those zombies outside, and he's still got the agency goons following orders from him – _and_ the agency still wants me to use as a test subject until they've cracked immortality. So what are we supposed to do about _them?_ How are we supposed to fight Bill when he doesn't even have a body this time around?!"

There was an awkward pause, as Mabel and Ford simultaneously tried to look more confident than they felt.

"I… _may_ have a possible solution," said Ford at last. "A machine that might be able to stop Bill once and for all… and _maybe_ get rid of those agency goons if we're lucky. Unfortunately, it will require some assembly, and probably a lot more fighting."

"What do we need?"

"Oh, just a few things, a few old components here and there. The good news is that I already have most of the necessary components, and they aren't back at the Mystery Shack."

"And the bad news?"

In spite of himself, Ford visibly blushed. "Well… it's been a very long time since I actually used these parts, and I didn't think I would need them anymore, so I moved the components out to one of my hidden caches just on the edge of the Enchanted Glade…"

"And in gnome territory," Mabel sighed. "Jesus Christ, do _all_ the hoops have to be on fire?"

"Also, I'm pretty sure I'm missing some of the rarer items needed to get this machine up and running… and the best possible source of replacements would be the agency's command centre."

"Oh, even better. You haven't even told us what this machine actually _does,_ Ford!"

"I'm afraid that'll depend entirely on how far Bill's managed to get with his plan. Now, I know the odds seem stacked against us, but believe me, all of this is possible. All of it," Ford added unnecessarily. "We just need to act before Bill does…"

* * *

Director Powers grinned maniacally as the trees blurred past him, his newfound limbs carrying him across the forest floor with impossible grace.

Behind him, a trail of corpses led back through the woods, their pulped bodies now testament to the strength that the serum had afforded him: most were gnomes, scouting parties of the vast army still hounding the agency's forces throughout Gravity Falls; they'd tried to stop him… and now their bloodied remains were left to cool amidst the undergrowth, many of them still clumped into the awkward colossi that they'd tried to group themselves into _right_ before Powers had crushed them beneath his fists. For a while, there'd been a Manotaur among them: that had given him some trouble, up until he'd snapped its horns, and then the battle had been so easy it was scarcely worth remembering.

He'd wanted to linger over the bodies, to lick the blood off his talons and eat their eyeballs straight from their shattered little skulls, but he managed to resist the temptation – barely: his new body had urges, most of them unsavoury at best, and as tempting as it was to revel in the power his transformation had offered him, he knew he had to press onwards.

He had to move quickly if he wanted to find their escaped test subject in time; judging by what they'd learned during the initial tests, he had perhaps six hours in which to retrieve Dipper Pines and deliver him to Bill before the serum wore off. Hopefully, it'd be enough time for Bill to claim the little brat's body as his own: once that was over with, he'd be more than happy to grant Powers all the extra time he wanted – month, a year, a decade – however long he needed for the immortality treatment to become a reality.

And that would be only the beginning of the rewards that Bill Cipher could bestow…

Sniffing the air, Powers took in the scent of the surrounding woods, trying to pick out the scent of human beings. It wasn't easy, even with his new sensory organs: now that he was away from the recognizable smells of the town, he had the putrid musk of gnome, the Manotaur's acrid blend of sweat and crappy deodorant, and the curiously plastic odour of Liliputtian to contend with. But if he put his mind to tuning out the extraneous sensory data, he could just about discern the distinctive tang of human sweat wafting through the forest. And through new eyes, he could see – however faintly – the luminous trail of residual energies that Mabel and Dipper had left in their wake. And unless he was mistaken, it was heading underground.

Cackling to himself with an alien voicebox, the thing that had once been Director Powers charged onwards through the dark woods, his mind awash with visions of the glories he would be rewarded with…

* * *

Dipper took a deep breath and tried to relax.

He'd long since given up on trying to eavesdrop on the ongoing conversation, if only because Mabel and Grunkle Ford were clearly doing their best to keep him from getting too upset: he could tell they were discussing the next stage of their plan, but the two of them had edged so far away from him that they'd ended up almost wedging themselves into the bunker entrance, and were now speaking so quietly that he could only work out one word in fifty – even as Mabel grew more and more frustrated.

So, he focussed on other things. Grunkle Ford had given him a tablet with a limited internet connection, along with specific instructions to have fun and relax, so Dipper began obediently wasting time. Admittedly, most of the sites he'd enjoyed had long since been taken down, but it wasn't long before he found replacements: these days, conspiracies were a dime a dozen and cryptozoology seemed to be gaining traction for some reason.

Sooner or later, though curiosity got the better of him, and he started checking up on history instead. He didn't doubt that he'd been told the truth, but he needed to see it with his own eyes, if only to satisfy his own curiosity… and unfortunately, the old saws about curiosity and cats proved just as accurate as always: a few quick searches had told him everything he'd wanted to know, from the horrible deaths of his friends and relatives unfortunate enough to die in the spotlight, to the nightmarish reputations that Ford and Mabel had earned in the last few years.

Ford, the Warlock of Roadkill County, renegade scientist and master criminal.

Bloody Murder Mabel, one-woman terrorist cell and America's Most Wanted.

Unfortunately, the research quickly left him with other thoughts that only made him feel more miserable as the minutes ticked by: by now, the death toll was finally beginning to sink in.

Gravity Falls was in ruins, its surviving human residents reduced to a handful of tribal scavengers.

Robbie was dead, having stumbled into the path of an oncoming train – or pushed, so the rumours went.

Gideon had accidentally blown himself up trying to prove to the world that magic existed.

Old Man McGucket was dead, poisoned by a government unwilling to take no for an answer.

Grenda and Marius had both died in a car crash, their deaths prompting international mourning despite the US Government's best attempt at a post-mortem smear campaign.

Candy had been murdered, her high-flying career at university cut short by a jealous colleague.

Soos turned up dead in a ditch, tortured to death in a botched attempt to learn the location of Gravity Falls.

Wendy had been arrested on charges of terrorism and sentenced to life in Monoc Prison, her last escape attempt leaving her in a coma for good measure.

Pacifica had _killed herself_ – and had been resurrected as a zombie in Bill's service.

Grunkle Stan was dead, courtesy of a short and brutal struggle with cancer.

And Mom and Dad were both dead. They'd spent the last few years of their lives making the silent pilgrimage to Gravity Falls in the hope that a miracle might bring Dipper back to them; old age had caught up with them first, though.

And now Dipper had to wonder, even if they could somehow stop Bill and get the Agency goons off their front doorstep, was anything worth _doing_ after that was over and done with. Grunkle Ford and Mabel were international fugitives who couldn't leave Gravity Falls, and by the sounds of things, everyone in the world wanted their hands on Dipper. And what of his immortality? Unless it vanished along with Bill's influence, it'd never go away. With Mabel now forty years older than him and Grunkle Ford barely held together by cyborg implants, Dipper was already going to outlive them – the only people he had left _in the entire world_. But the thought of living forever, _alone_ in the hell that Gravity Falls had become, unable to grow up, unable to die of old age, unable to leave without becoming targeted by just about every single government and company on the planet…

Well, in hindsight, it wasn't so surprising that Mabel and Ford had lied to him for so long. And the more he thought about it, the worst thing about being cured of Bill's influence was that he'd never be able to forget what had happened to him: he couldn't go back to the happy, oblivious life in quarantine he'd enjoyed up until yesterday, not even if Mabel agreed to play along with the charade for as long as her body could tolerate regression, not even if the medical computer really could look after him for eternity.

 _Maybe we shouldn't have broken Old Man McGucket's memory gun,_ Dipper thought ruefully. _I could really use it right about now._

And the more he thought about it, the more he had to wonder why anyone would have bothered-

"Dipper? You okay?"

Startled out of his reverie, he realized that Mabel had taken a seat on the mattress in front of him. By now, she'd taken the time to change out of her bloodstained coveralls and into a clean pair of jeans and a t-shirt; she was even wearing one of her homemade sweaters for good measure, and seeing someone as formidable as future Mabel wearing the same clothes she used to wear as a twelve-year-old once again left Dipper unable to do more than boggle in bewilderment.

 _As if it isn't weird enough that my twin sister looks more like grandma right now..._

"I'm fine," he lied.

Mabel's battle-scarred old face softened into a reassuring smile. "You don't have to pretend you're okay, bro-bro. I've seen enough upset faces staring back at me to recognize the signs when I see them."

"The signs of _what,_ exactly?"

"Oh, sadness, fear, rage, despair, a burgeoning mental breakdown – you name it, I recognize it. I've had a lot of experience at talking to people after a battle, and I know how to tell if they're suffering more than they let on. Also, I've actually interrogated people for information many, _many_ times in the last forty years, but that's beside the point."

Dipper shrugged. "Okay, so I'm sad. I'm pretty sure you figured that out around the time you saw me bawling my eyes out. Besides, I've just been told that my friends are all dead and I'm down to two surviving family members. Is there any reason why I _shouldn't_ be sad?"

"It's not just that you're sad, Dipper," said Mabel, gently. "You're holding back. You've got something on your mind and you haven't voiced it; times as bad as they are, it's not such a good idea to leave things unspoken."

"Why, because the two of you might be dead in the next few hours? Or because I'll be too busy being possessed by Bill to say what I wanted to say?" Dipper had meant to keep his voice has even as possible, but he hadn't been able to disguise the crack in his voice; despite his best efforts, the stress was already bleeding through.

To his surprise, Mabel actually managed a snort of laughter. "Well, there is _that_ ," she admitted. "But really, it's just because… well, it's been a long day for you, and I don't want you carrying around anymore baggage than you already are. By now, I know it helps to get things off your chest every now and again."

"From experience?"

" _Always_ from experience. So come on: say what you want to say."

Dipper thought for a moment, and then began… only to lose his nerve before he could even begin. For almost a full minute, he could only sit there, trying to grasp at the rant that he'd bitten back shortly after Ford and Mabel's big explanation. It took a lot of effort; every time he thought he'd gotten to grips with what was upsetting him – on top of all the dead friends and relatives – the words dried up and blew away every time he tried to speak. Eventually, though, he finally managed to get past the mental roadblock and begin speaking – tentatively at first, but growing faster and faster as his rant went on.

"Well, I've been stuck in Gravity Falls for the last forty years, and you've done everything you could to keep me safe and keep me comfortable through all of it. But the thing is, after everything that's happened, all the deaths, all the fighting, all the slander, all the trouble that's happened because of me – I mean, you and Grunkle Ford are _fugitives!_ You could have had a life of your own out there; Grunkle Ford and Grunkle Stan could have been hunting the world for anomalies if it hadn't been for me. You've been stuck here in Gravity Falls ever since people started trying to hunt me down, and you've had to fight to keep me from getting kidnapped, and so many people I knew ended up dead because they were close to me or because they stood up for me, and I don't even know if I'm worth any of it-"

" _Never,_ _ **ever**_ _say that again,"_ Mabel hissed, her voice a glacial whisper.

"I thought I was being allowed to speak my mind," Dipper mumbled sheepishly.

Mabel sighed. "You don't think you were worth all the suffering, all the deaths and worse? You think it would have been better if the government had kidnapped and dissected you right at the beginning, just to spare _me_ from a few years of suffering? I learned from the best when it comes to the long uphill struggle, Dipper: Grunkle Stan taught me everything he knew, you see, and he understood better than anyone else in this world exactly what it meant to truly sacrifice for the sake of the family. He knew how important it was to carry on, even when all the experts claimed you should have given up years ago. Ford didn't think being rescued was worth risking the safety of the world either, remember? Since the day you got sick, I've lost friends, family, lovers; I've seen my name dragged through the mud and watched as some of the best people I've ever met were branded terrorists; I've murdered more people than you've had hot dinners, and I'm here to tell you that _every drop of blood_ was worth shedding – just to save _**you.**_ Because this isn't the world we fought to save from Weirdmageddon; because this planet doesn't _deserve_ immortality... and most of all, because you're my brother. Nothing in the world will change that, and nobody alive can stop me caring about you."

A ringing silence followed this little speech, broken only by the distant clutter and thud of Ford busying himself about the shelves.

And then, just as Dipper was about to puzzle out some kind of a reply, there was an earsplitting crash from overhead, followed by the long, drawn-out crunch of something extremely heavy being audibly torn out of place: at first, Dipper could only stare around in confusion, but then he saw the holes slowly forming in the roof a few feet away, and realized with a thrill of horror that something was uprooting the tree under which the bunker sat – and taking the bunker's secret door with it.

Mabel didn't even deign to look upwards: she simply grabbed Dipper by the hand and snatched him from the bed, dragging him towards the hatchway on the opposite side of the room, where Grunkle Ford was already readying a plethora of weaponry.

"You remember the layout of this place from our first visit, right?" she whispered.

"I think so."

"Do you remember how to get through the next chambers?"

"Of course, but-"

"Then you know where to go. We've overridden the door in the booby-trapped room, so you shouldn't have any trouble getting through unless you step on that pressure pad. Don't stop until you're past the decontamination chamber and out in the tunnels. We'll meet up with you just as soon as we've dealt with this; if we don't come back, Ford's stashed enough food and water down there to keep you going for at least a month, plus some digging equipment if the worst comes to the worst."

Mabel bit her lip for a moment, and then pressed a calculator-sized lump of paper-wrapped material into Dipper's hands. "There's enough explosive in that to bring down the cavern roof," she said solemnly.

"It's a bomb?" Dipper squeaked.

"It's on a ten-second timer: just press the red button and run. Use it only if you can't dig your way through the tunnels. Just remember to always burrow upwards. Now go!"

"But –"

"Just GO!"

Dipper _almost_ complied, almost turned and ran for the control room he knew was still waiting for him past that booby-trapped antechamber. But at the last minute, he stopped – curiosity, a need for control and loyalty anchoring him in place: instead of running, he simply ducked inside the open hatchway and peered out.

Up ahead of the two defenders, the next few feet of floorspace bristled with vicious-looking weaponry: portable gun turrets, attack drones, proximity mines, net-launchers, bear traps, and even a host of magical artefacts primed and ready to cast their hexes. Ford had rearmed himself with his clattering belt of arcane devices, and had also equipped himself with a pair of shoulder-mounted cannons for good measure, leaving his hands free to work the controls of the few non-automated traps. And as if draping an entire bandolier of weapons over one shoulder wasn't enough, Mabel was now loading a rifle that looked as though it had started life as a cannon on the deck of a WWII-era battleship.

Then, with a nerve-jangling shriek of tearing metal, the bunker's roof _buckled_ upwards, tearing a massive hole in the ceiling right where the secret entrance had been. A split-second later, something huge leapt into the room.

From what Dipper could see, the intruder was human- _shaped_ – in that it had more or less the right number of arms and legs, but after that, humanity and this creature parted ways. Whatever it was, it stood taller than a manotaur, its scale-studded bulk barely fitting into the shelter even with half the roof crumpled upwards, its gargantuan muscles visibly rippling and warping across its misshapen body as it sized up the defenders. From what little Dipper could see, the thing's tree-trunk-shaped limbs appeared to have _divided_ in places – a left leg sprouting into a tripod-like set of hoofs, a right arm branching off at the wrist into four claw-tipped tentacles, a shrivelled human arm extending from the left elbow. Its fingers bristled with needle-sharp talons, its palms oozed with slurping tendrils like miniature tongues that ravenously licked the floor, and its grapnel-like feet carved deep divots in the floor as it stepped closer. Its heavy-browed, gorilla-like face was dominated by a massive set of jagged fangs and razor-sharp incisors, so large and so misshapen that they appeared to be forcing its outthrust jaws apart.

But the most distinctive thing about this monster's body were the eyes, for it had _dozens_ of them: along with the five on its face, it had two on its left arm, three on its right arm, a watermelon-sized one on its chest, and a whole cluster sprouting across his shoulders, each of them focussing a tiny golden pupil in Mabel's direction.

And then, to Dipper's shock, the monster spoke.

"Mabel Pines," it snarled, its throat bulging and distending as it struggled to replicate human speech. "And _Ford_ Pines as well. Even better! The man who helped make an idiot of me in front of the entire agency, and the bitch who kept the secret to immortality hidden here in this podunk hellhole. The three things I wanted in the world in one place!"

Mabel's eyes narrowed. "Let me guess… Director Powers, right? Last I saw you, you were bleeding out in a corridor."

"Huh," said Ford airily. "Before then, the last I heard of you, you were sniffing around crime scenes looking for any sign we'd been there and getting humiliated in every newspaper from here to Peru. Quite a step-up for you, Agent Nobody."

"Bill Cipher offers up his blessings to his faithful servants!" The Powers-Thing roared. "Even dormant, he still had the power grant me another chance to stop you once and for all. You know what I want, weaklings: you have Dipper Pines. Surrender him and I'll be mercif-"

Mabel's first shot caught him squarely in his chest, bursting the eyeball sitting there like a grape, tearing open his ribcage, shredding his left arm off and sending him crashing to the floor in a bloody heap.

"You talk too much," she said at last, as the Powers-thing hauled himself upright again.

"You think that matters to me?!" the monster thundered, waving the tattered stump of his arm in the air; already, tiny threads of flesh were weaving themselves back into shape around the wound. "I've got the stuff of nightmares running through my veins! I can regenerate as many limbs as you can tear off and more, and I can come back from injuries that would kill even you! Unless you want a _real_ demonstration of invincib-"

"Bored now," said Mabel, and opened fire again.

And right then and there, Dipper knew that Mabel had become someone _else_ for this little stand-off. The woman standing before him was no longer _just_ his sister's older self, scarred and haggard yet every bit as kind as she'd been as a twelve-year-old: _this_ was Bloody Murder Mabel, the Jailbreaker, the Terror of Glass Shard Beach, the Man-Skinner, the Death Knell – a woman who had as many aliases as she had atrocities to her name. This was a woman internationally known as a terrorist, a psychopath and so much worse. This was a woman who'd spent the last forty years fighting and killing her way across the world, sometimes in pursuit of a cure for him, sometimes in the hopes of putting an end to the attacks on her loved ones, sometimes just for revenge – but always, _always_ walking away with blood on her hands. This was the woman who'd led the attack on the agency command centre, the shadowy monster who'd stabbed Powers in the guts. This was the woman the world _feared._

If only she hadn't chosen to make her last stand while dressed in a hand-knitted pink sweater.

"I'm still standing, you stupid bitch!" Powers howled. "I'm still standing-"

And then Grunkle Ford triggered the traps, and the world went mad once again. The next minute was occupied by nothing but screams, explosions, and the sound of gunfire from almost a hundred different weapons. Amidst the flash of gunshots, Dipper vaguely perceived Mabel firing her cannon again and again, tearing off limbs and melting flesh from bones; he saw Ford blazing away with his shoulder-moulded guns, puncturing eyeballs and flaying skin with every shot, pausing only to reach into his pockets and throw some fresh destructive invention into the carnage; he saw the turrets and drones and mines erupting with every last ordnance in readiness. And all the while, the Powers-thing was writhing in agony, every limb he regenerated instantly blasted off, every fresh patch of flesh instantly incinerated.

Then, just as quickly as it started, the bombardment came to an end, Mabel and Ford finally pausing to reload.

And in the silence that followed, Powers made his move: the first swing of his newly-regenerated fist took out roughly half the remaining traps, and the next effectively cleared the room; a chunk of ruined machinery caught Mabel square in the chest, sending her tumbling into one of the shelves – which promptly collapsed on top of her.

Suddenly finding himself facing down the advancing monster alone, Grunkle Ford pressed a button on his utility belt and flung himself headlong towards Powers, his overcoat suddenly erupting into a maelstrom of glistening silver tentacles as he charged. For perhaps fifteen seconds, Ford duelled the monster, his spider-legged harness dancing nimbly around his opponent's bulk as the metal tendrils sliced and stabbed away at the Power-thing's flesh from every conceivable angle. But in the end, Powers aimed low and snapped three of Ford's harness-legs in half, toppling him over; Grunkle Ford had just enough time to let out a grunt of "oh god, not again," before the Powers-thing picked him up by the scruff of his neck and bowled him into the corner.

"Now," the monster panted. "Where's that little-"

There was a muffled clatter from behind him, and then with a berserker howl, Mabel flung herself through the air towards the startled monster. Landing on his back, she drew a knife from her bandolier and lashed out at the thing's defenceless flesh in a mad frenzy of stabbing; again and again, Powers did everything he could to shake her loose, from writhing back and forth in a flurry of motion to clawing desperately at his back and shoulders, even pummelling himself in the face with chunks of debris, but his attacker refused to be dislodged. No matter how swift the swing or how brutal the collision, Mabel simply wasn't there, and for every counterattack launched in her direction, Mabel would just draw another knife and drive it into the director's flesh – until Powers' back was a pincushion of knives, daggers, stilettos and other blades.

But thirty seconds in, Powers reared back and slammed himself spine-first into the shelter wall as hard as he could, sending a colossal tremor rippling through the entire bunker and toppling Mabel to the floor in a semi-conscious heap.

There was a pause, as the Powers-thing regarded Mabel's fallen body with interest. Then, he raised one massive fist to strike-

-and in that moment, Dipper knew _exactly_ what he had to do. The idea had been forming in the back of his mind for the last few seconds – ever since he'd been told to run for the decontamination chamber, in fact.

So, stepping out from behind the hatchway, he took a deep breath, steeled himself for the worst, and bellowed "HEY!"

Powers froze, a multitude of eyes instantly focussing on Dipper.

"You want me?" Dipper shouted. "Come and get me!"

And with that, he turned and ran, pausing only to slam the hatch shut.

Naturally, Powers tried to follow: from behind him, Dipper could hear the monster slowly tearing the hatch off its hinges, but even with that out of the way there'd be no chance of him ever fitting his colossal bulk through the door – which at least bought Dipper a few precious minutes to run on while Powers went about punching his way through the bulkhead.

Down the pipe he scurried, scuffing his hands and bloodying his knees as he went, until he finally emerged into the booby-trapped chamber – the growing cacophony of Powers' fists against the opposite bulkhead still ringing in his ears. Stepping nimbly over the pressure pad, Dipper charged through the overridden door and into the long-deserted control room; it took him almost a minute to force the door shut behind him, and then only after he managed to find the crowbar that Mabel had jammed in the works, and by then he could already hear the sound of Powers reaching the end of the pipe.

"YOU CAN'T RUN FOREVER!" Powers howled. "I'LL FIND YOU! I'LL CATCH YOU! I'LL BRING YOU BACK IF I HAVE TO TEAR THIS ENTIRE BUILDING TO PIECES!"

A moment later, Powers' diatribe was abruptly drowned out by the loud rumble of internal mechanisms in motion, and Dipper knew at once that the director had just brought his foot down fair and square on the pressure plate. As the monster hammered furiously at the crushing wall segments, Dipper hurried over to the control console on the other side of the room, and began keying in commands as quickly as possible; after the mangling he'd witnessed back in the shelter, he could already tell that the booby trap wouldn't be enough to kill Powers for good, and probably wouldn't even be enough to slow him down for very long.

 _Okay,_ he thought, frantically clattering away at the antique keyboard. _Need to find the cryotube controls. It was pretty user-friendly by the sounds of things, so it shouldn't be too hard. Question is, which ones did Mabel use? Let's see… no, that's the air conditioning. No, that's the lights – helpful but not what I needed. Uh… let's try…_

There was a deafening crash from the room behind him. A screen to Dipper's left helpfully informed him that one of the crushers next-door had gone offline, and the others wouldn't last much longer under the continued onslaught.

 _Might want to hurry up a little, too. Wait, here we are! Just need to get this started… and we're done!_

"DO YOU WANT ME TO BREAK YOUR LEGS, YOU LITTLE SHIT?!" thundered Powers, over the groan of failing pneumatic mechanisms. "BECAUSE I WILL IF I HAVE TO!"

But Dipper was already making a beeline for the decontamination chamber: a quick shower of antibacterial fluid, a rough blast of ice-cold air, and he was through to the final room of the bunker.

And exactly as planned, the cryotube was already beginning to defrost.

* * *

At long last, the door caved in, and Powers awkwardly squeezed his bulk into the control room. Dipper wasn't there, but the little brat had left a very obvious trail leading into the next room – a cramped booth clearly recognizable as a decontamination chamber of some kind. Once again, Powers couldn't have fitted even if he'd been interested in playing along with laboratory regulations, but by that stage, it didn't matter: he simply launched himself at the wall and began tearing his way through it as he had he had the last three.

Granted, this one was a little trickier to get through than the others – a vicious little blend of concrete, steel bulkheads, and an improbably durable lining that even Powers' new senses couldn't recognize. Whatever Stanford Pines had been hiding here, it had obviously been very important – and Dipper had assumed that these aging defences would be enough to keep him safe. But he hadn't reckoned on anything as strong as Powers following him. Having studied what little information the agency's data retrieval experts had managed to uncover on Stanford Pines' hidden outposts, the director knew that facilities like this one had no exits, only storage chambers built into hastily-dug caverns: Dipper's brilliant escape plan had ended up trapping him like a rat, and all Powers had to do was reach in and grab him.

After forty seconds of clawing and pounding, the wall collapsed, allowing Powers to stride confidently into the dank caverns beyond. Even without his senses, he could easily navigate the darkness, for the place was lit by the glow of what appeared to be a set of cryostasis chambers… from their light, he could just about recognize Dipper's silhouette as it scurried away into the darkness.

Grinning wider than ever, Powers bounded after him – only for _something_ to wrap itself around his neck and wrench him in the opposite direction, sending him crashing to the ground.

" _Out of my way,"_ hissed a voice.

With grunt of pain, Powers gently prised his face out of the dirt – and then looked up in astonishment at the creature that had ambushed him, trying vainly to work out what it was, but even his new senses didn't have much luck in determining the nature of this new arrival: mounted on eight spindly arachnid legs, its slimy white body seemed almost like that of an insect, except for the almost human limbs – asymmetric as they were; and though the head seemed to possess the same dimensions as an insect, what with the clicking mouthparts and the bulbous red eyes, there was near-human expression conveyed there. Whatever this thing was, it could think, and judging by the expression on that monstrous face, it could _hate_ as well.

And were those… tentacles oozing in and out of its chest?

"What the hell are you?" he blurted out.

"They called me Experiment 210," the creature replied. "Or the Shapeshifter if you're not into numbered designation. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've been frozen here for quite a while, and I'm not interested in having my revenge interrupted by… whatever the hell _you_ are." It glanced up the caverns ahead, where the Pines boy was still backing away.

"Don't you go anywhere, Dipper!" it called out. "I'll be with you in just a minute..."

"Oh no you don't!" Powers roared, grabbing the Shapeshifter by the arm. "He's mine!"

"Excuse me? I was here first! He was the one who froze me in the first place – and that was _after_ his great-uncle locked me up in these caverns!"

"Well, he ruined my career and made me look like an idiot in front of the entire agency, but you don't see _me_ whining about it!"

From somewhere up ahead, Dipper let out a snort of mocking laughter. Was it Power's imagination, or was the kid up to something? It was hard to tell with the Shapeshifter's bulk writhing in and out of view, but it looked as though he was squeezing something against the wall – something just behind his back.

"Besides," Powers continued loudly, "I need him alive!"

"Oh you _need_ him, do you? I wasn't aware that I was supposed to give a damn about your problems at any point. And this talk about careers and agencies… frankly, you're starting to sound uncannily like a human being – or like you used to be. Tell me, can you shapeshift or alter your body in any way?"

"…not really, no."

"Pity," sneered the Shapeshifter. "You won't be much fun, then."

"What are you talki-"

The Shapeshifter's left arm shot out at high speed, suddenly transformed into the serrated blade of a buzzsaw, tearing neatly through Powers' right arm and cutting deep into his chest. Caught off guard, Powers lurched backwards in shock, a plume of oily-black ichor pouring from the stump of his arm; immediately his healing factor kicked in, sealing the wound shut and sprouting fresh growths of flesh and bone to replace the limb – but by then the Shapeshifter was making a beeline for Dipper, its arms warping into a brutish-looking arsenal of giant corkscrews and potato peelers as it advanced on him.

With a roar of dismay, Powers flung himself at the creature, grabbing it by the throat and slamming it headfirst into the nearest wall. Recovering instantly, the Shapeshifter writhed and twisted in his grip, its skin erupting with needle-sharp quills that tore through Powers' flesh and punctured several of his eyeballs; howling in pain, Powers retaliated with a flurry of brutal sledgehammer blows to his opponent's head, but every single blow bounced harmlessly off the thing's suddenly elastic bones; a moment later, the Shapeshifter's flesh hardened into solid granite – and suddenly the Director found himself impotently punching the flank of a rock-monster twice as tall as he was.

The next thing he knew, he was being bodily crushed under the monster's tombstone-shaped feet; for ten seconds, the thing continued jumping up and down on him, until Powers finally managed to kick it away with the one leg that hadn't been mashed into tomato puree. Regenerative abilities now in overdrive, the Director gathered up his internal organs and went on the attack again, lacerating the monster with claws that could scythe through solid steel – only for the Shapeshifter to dissolve into liquid and ooze unscathed through Powers' talons.

And in the end, the two of them were so preoccupied with the fight that neither of them happened to notice Dipper making a run for the exit.

It took just under eight seconds for the two of them to notice the high-pitched beeping noise echoing up from the cavern wall – and by then, it was already too late.

The explosion caught Powers squarely in the back, flinging him headlong across the cavern and into the opposite wall; and as he clawed his way upright, he had just enough time to see a gaping fissure tearing its away across the cave roof – before the entire chamber came crashing down around them.

Everything went black.

* * *

Sometime later, Director Powers awoke to a stabbing pain in his bowels.

Forcing his throbbing eyes open, he took in as much of his surroundings as quickly as he could, but to his dismay, his enhanced senses didn't seem to be working: all he could see were shadows and bare rock walls, broken only by the faint light of the cryotubes – and that was barely enough to see by, for most of them had been smashed, and the only tube left online was now flickering like a half-dead fluorescent tube.

Another jagged stab of pain rippled through his body. Powers tried to sit up, but his body didn't respond; all he could do was awkwardly push himself halfway into a sitting position before his strength gave out. Groaning, he instinctively reached for the shrapnel that had presumably impaled him; once he'd removed it, he'd be able to start regenerating again, enough to plan some kind of escape from this cave-in at any rate. But there was no shrapnel, and no wounds to speak of either: whatever was hurting him was _inside_ his body.

Then, his fingers touched flesh – ordinary human flesh – and Powers realized with a thrill of terror that the serum had finally worn off while he'd been unconscious.

The pain he'd felt was the cancer in his bowels, enhanced by his healing factor: not only was it a thousand times more painful than anything he'd felt before, but now he could feel it colonizing parts of his body that it previously hadn't intruded, strangling his internal organs and destroying his spinal cord. His breath no longer came easily, but now emerged only in short, watery gasps – either because the cancer had spread to his lungs, or because the tumours now blossoming in his bowels had grown enough to crush them from within.

He was dying.

And worse still, even if Powers could have recovered enough to crawl for help, there'd be no point: the cave-in had blocked the entrance he'd dug in the bulkhead, and there was no way in hell he'd be able to dig his way out – least of all with these weak, aged hands of his.

He'd failed his mission.

Dipper had escaped, and there was no way Power could ever be able to recapture him now.

Now there was nothing left to do but lie here in the darkness, freezing cold and crippled with agony, waiting to die.

Then, just as Powers thought the day couldn't possibly get any worse, a voice from somewhere overhead muttered, "Well _this_ is a fine mess you've gotten us into, isn't it?"

The dying cryotube flickered helpfully, and Powers realized that the Shapeshifter was now clinging to the ceiling directly above him.

"You couldn't have bothered to share with me, could you?" it snarled down at him. "I'd have been happy to give you the kid if you'd asked nicely. Sure, I would have kept his limbs, but I'd have given him to you. But no, you had to have him all to yourself. You just _had_ to make it all about you. Well, I sincerely hope you're happy, old man: you've lost your prize, and I've lost my best chance for revenge."

Powers could only groan in answering: he didn't have enough breath in his lungs to speak.

"Still," the Shapeshifter chuckled mirthlessly, "I suppose I might as well make the most of the situation. After all, you and I aren't going anywhere in a hurry, and after god only knows how many years spent frozen inside that damn tube, I need an outlet for my frustrations."

Suddenly, the Shapeshifter was standing over him, alien appendages moulding themselves into new and terrible shapes.

"And don't worry about waiting for that growth in your guts to kill you, old man," it chortled. "Before I was put on ice, I had plenty of time to experiment with my powers on anything unlucky enough to wander in through the tunnels: I can shape my cells into organs of any kind imaginable, I can transfuse the body with specially-shapeshifted blood, and thanks to all those improvised moleperson vivisections, I've learned how to keep a living body alive for _months_ – no matter how much damage it's sustained, no matter how desperately it wants to die. You and me are going to have one _hell of a time,_ old man _…"_

Powers looked up in despair as the Shapeshifters body dissolved into a mass of writhing tendrils slowly descending towards him, and tried to think of something meaningful to say – some last-minute gasp of defiance, some heartfelt farewell to dead relatives who probably couldn't hear him, or maybe something pithy and profound to fill the moments before the torture began.

In the end, all he could think of was Trigger, and what would happen to him now that Powers had failed his mission.

Then the first of the tendrils tore deep into his belly, and all coherent thought was lost in the tide of blood and torture that followed.

* * *

A/N: Up next - new arrivals, new campaigns, and a new weapon in action! Feel free to review and theorize, ladies and gents!


	10. To Plan B And Beyond

A/N: Aaaaargh! Sorry for the delay, everyone - health issues and work got in the way of writing this story. Once again, I can only do my best to make up for lost time. A hearty thank you to everyone who reviewed, favourited and followed. I hope this chapter lives up to the hype, and feel free to critique the typos that creep in late at night. Read, review, and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Gravity Falls is not mine. Believe me, folks, believe me.

* * *

Mabel awoke to the sound of the bunker roof collapsing three rooms away. It took a long time for the noise of the cave-in to subside, and when the thunderous cacophony finally ceased, the silence descended so suddenly and so thickly that Mabel thought she'd gone deaf. It wasn't until she heard the distant echo of rocks pattering down on floor tiles that she belatedly realized that she was still in possession of working eardrums. However, as she slowly hauled herself upright – head throbbing from the impact with the wall, broken ribs screeching in protest – the events of the last few minutes flooded back through her bruised skull, and the realized that she was missing something far more important than her hearing.

"Dipper?" she called.

Silence was her only reply.

Mopping dust from her face, she scanned the bomb shelter for any sign of her brother, but found little more than wreckage: the room lay in ruins, an anarchic clutter of fallen shelves, toppled ceiling tiles, drying bloodstains and mechanisms torn loose from the roof – now beyond repair. A few feet away, Grunkle Ford lay crumpled in the corner, only just regaining consciousness; his cybernetic organs were programmed to provide automated medical attention in emergencies, but it was a slow process, and Ford was clearly still too groggy to move unassisted.

Anxiously, Mabel peered through the doorway opposite, hoping that it'd be her brother emerging from the shadows and not Director Powers.

"Dipper?"

Still nothing. Groaning, Mabel hauled herself towards the open doorway, readying herself for the worst, hastily snatching up a gun and a medical kit from the pile of refuse along the way.

"DIPPER?!" she hollered, unable to disguise the fear in her voice.

"Relax!" a familiar voice called out. "I'm okay. I think I'm gonna have a heart attack if I have any more stress tonight, but I'm okay."

A moment later, Dipper appeared in the doorway, covered in dust from head to toe, pockmarked with dozens of tiny cuts and bruises, but otherwise unharmed. And for the first time since he'd left quarantine and become aware of what had really been going on outside his secluded little world, he was smiling. Mabel hadn't seen this particular look on her brother's face for decades, not even on the occasions when he was at peace and happy despite his confinement; no, this was the kind of smile he'd been wearing in the aftermath of their greatest and most dangerous victories (their first clash with Bill, the battle with Gideon's robot, their narrow escape from the Shapeshifter), a mad, terrified-yet-triumphant grin that spread from ear to ear and threatened to take the top off his head if it grew any wider. From experience, Mabel knew that this kind of smile was a necessity: on occasions like this, you _had_ to wear the smile – or else give way to all the fear you'd been hiding up until then and start screaming at the top of your voice.

Immediately, Mabel threw her arms around Dipper and drew him into a furious hug. "What _happened?"_ she demanded.

"Well, I just woke up the Shapeshifter-"

"You did _what?"_

"And then I lured Powers into a fight with him-"

" _Huh?!"_

"And let off the explosive you gave me to seal them inside the lab. Simple as that." Dipper's left eyelid twitched slightly, the edge of his smile shuddering in repressed anxiety. "Nothing to worry about. Piece of cake."

"Are you _joking?"_ Mabel exploded. "Never, _ever_ do _anything_ like that again!"

"Excuse me? What other options did I have?"

"Oh, I don't know – you could have followed my goddamn instructions for one thing! All you had to do was run for the exit and stay in the labs until we either gave the all-clear or the hunters gave up looking for you! You were _not_ supposed to play chicken with mutated government agents, you weren't supposed to release the Shapeshifter from cryostorage, and you _definitely_ weren't supposed to monkey around with military-grade explosives! You could have been killed – either by Powers, the Shapeshifter, the bomb or the cave-in!"

"If I hadn't lured him away, Powers would have killed you!"

"So? In case you hadn't noticed, Dipper, I'm a worn-out old lady with a barely-medicated case of arthritis and a criminal record longer than Grunkle Ford's dissertation. _I_ am expendable; _you_ are not. I'm here to save you, not the other way around. Okay?"

"I thought we were supposed to save each other!" Dipper shouted. "Remember? You saved me from Bill when he possessed me, I saved you from Mabeland! That's how this is supposed to work; we're supposed to _help_ each other!"

"Things have changed, in case you hadn't noticed! You're one of only two family members I have left: you've been commoditized by just about everyone on that planet, and that means that until we can find a means of stopping Bill and resealing the barrier, _you are not safe!_ I have to protect you at any and all cost. In other words, if Ford and I have to give up our lives to keep you out of Bill's hands, that is a more-than-acceptable cost as far as I'm concerned."

"And what am I supposed to do after that? How am I supposed to fend for myself when I'm alone in Gravity Falls? Even if you somehow jerryrig everything in the Mystery Shack to keep me safe and fed, I'm still going to be all alone, and unable to leave town without becoming a target. And let's not forget that I'm also supposed to be immortal: that's the sort of thing you want to leave me to, eternal life alone in Gravity Falls? _That's your idea of living?!"_

"Listen-"

But Mabel's words were lost in a deafening roar that immediately sent both her and Dipper lurching away, hands clasped over their ears.

"Excuse me," said Grunkle Ford, lowering the air horn. "I don't want to interrupt this extremely pertinent conversation, but I really think we should put the discussion of immortality on hold until we've sealed our defences and we aren't in danger of being ambushed by government forces or rampaging Gnomes. I'm just saying…"

Mabel sighed. "Okay, okay… but no more risk-taking, clear?"

Now it was Dipper's turn to sigh. "Perfectly," he grumbled.

"You know I can tell you're lying, right? You always chew on the inside of your cheek when you're getting rebellious."

"And you do know you're still my sister, right? You haven't graduated to motherhood."

" _Dipper…"_

"Alright, alright, shutting up."

Fortunately, sealing the defences was easier than it sounded: thanks to the items that Ford had been stashing around the bunker, he had more than enough electronic components to cobble together a simple hologram projector and hide the wreckage of the bunker from prying eyes; then, once they'd managed to patch up Mabel's broken ribs with another one of Ford's miraculous hypodermics, repairs proceeded very quickly – Mabel helping to block the holes in the wall and ceiling with fallen crates and chunks of scrap metal, Ford using a handheld gel-sprayer to effectively mortar the rubble together, and Dipper helping in whatever way he could. It took almost an hour, but eventually they were able to effectively seal the crater in the roof.

Hopefully, it would be enough to ensure that the hologram disguise couldn't be undone by nosy scouts, rampaging Gnomes or anyone else who might end up walking through it: they might notice that the grass and shrubbery seemed a bit insubstantial, but at least they wouldn't drop right into the bunker and give the whole game away.

By the time they were done, the first inklings of sunlight were creeping over the horizon, and Mabel soon found herself preparing an improvised breakfast of canned beans, canned ham, crackers and apples – "fresh out of the stasis fields," Ford remarked dryly.

"Now," said Dipper, "You said you had a plan to build this anti-Bill machine… and you and Mabel were arguing about it for the last couple of hours – well, I have to assume you were. I mean, it's not like you'd argue about anything else at this stage unless it was extremely chancy or going to put me in a lot of danger. Am I right?"

Mabel sighed. _Yep, he's ever bit as bright as he was in the glory days of Gravity Falls._ "Correct," she said at last.

"So, what is it?"

Ford sat down heavily on an overturned crate, his spider-legs busying themselves with repairs as he helped himself to breakfast.

"Well, it's a bit improvised," he began hesitantly. "But… I think I have managed to come up with a fairly simple three-step plan. Step 1: we retrieve the first half of our components for the machine from the caches hidden in the forest; that'll probably cause significant uproar among the Gnomes once they realize that someone's been intruding on their territory, which segues quite neatly into Step 2: we launch a second attack on the FIA's command centre with "help" from the Gnomes and allied forces, and take the parts we need. Step 3: we take back the Mystery Shack, remove all traces of Bill from Dipper's mind, ensure all the zombies are put down for good, assemble the machine, and _kill Bill._ "

There was a pause, as the echoes died away.

"How are we supposed to do that?" Dipper asked. "There's only three of us."

" _Two_ of us," said Mabel sharply. "We're trying to keep you safe, remember? You'll be spending this mission safely hidden in the most secure cache we can find until the coast is clear."

For a moment, it looked as though Dipper was about to argue again, but at the last minute, thought better of it.

"Alright," he sighed. "Point taken. How are _you_ supposed to pull this off? You're outnumbered by Gnomes, FIA and zombies on all three steps. Plus, I don't think the command centre's going to fall for another surprise attack so soon. How are you supposed to outfight them a second time?"

Ford sucked in a deep breath as one of his spider-legs went about tightening a loosened joint close to his back. "Well," he said, "now that the sun's up, we're going to have to wait until nightfall before we launch this second attack. Good news is, Bill's ritual depends on your presence, so the zombies will have to stay where they are for the time being."

"Same goes for the troops," said Mabel. "And as long as the FIA are in Gravity Falls, they'll be on the receiving end of Gnome skirmishes, especially the scouts and any troops left on duty at the Mystery Shack. General Schmebulock probably won't be able to kill them all through lightning raids alone, but he'll definitely be able to whittle them down to more manageable numbers. Hopefully, the FIA won't have the budget to call in more troops. One way or the other, it'll be enough to keep the Gnomes and other creatures of the forest occupied while we get to the caches."

"Once that's done, we lure the bulk of the Gnome army to the command centre and leave them to fight it out while we loot the base for the rare parts. Good news is, I've done some long-distance analytics, and I've worked out that our necessary components are in storage within the base's vault, kept around for use by Polonius and his cronies. We get in, get out, blow the place to hell and back, and then move onto the next step."

Dipper's brow wrinkled. "And that's it? I'm pretty sure that won't be enough, Grunkle Ford: I mean, apart from the hole you left in it, that place has some pretty thick walls, so the FIA don't even have to fight. Unless they bring in Manotaurs, the Gnomes won't be able to get in-"

"And Manotaurs make pretty obvious targets," finished Mabel. "We've thought of that. The trick will have to be getting everyone out of the base and too busy fighting the Gnomes to focus on us."

"And how are we going to do that? Come to think of it, how are we supposed to retake the Mystery Shack?"

A weary grin edged its way across Grunkle Ford's corpselike face. "We have a secret weapon."

" _Two_ secret weapons," said Mabel with a grin.

"And that's not even counting the Lazarus subject."

Dipper sighed. "Look, will you just tell me? I really don't need any more suspense in my life."

"The two we need are normally stored down in the old basement lab at the Mystery Shack, but they can easily be accessed from outside: we have an underground deployment track built specifically for them in the event of a Gnome attack, and it can be triggered remotely. If necessary, we can send them at least half a mile into the forest."

"But what _are_ these secret weapons?"

Mabel's smile grew. "We call them the Sheriff and the Deputy."

* * *

"What is taking so long?"

"A-apologies, Mr Northwest. We've had some difficulty having the prisoner transfer ratified by the Correctional Authority; the helicopter's been delayed by bad weather just north of California, but it should be here within at least half an hour-"

"For Christ's sake, what is _wrong_ with you people? You were supposed to hand over the Pines brat once you'd finished harvesting him, and you screwed it up; you were supposed to kill Sixer and Shooting Star, and you screwed that up to; you were supposed to keep me in the loop about your progress, and not only do you leave me in the dark, but your boss decides to go on a one-man mission to recapture Pine Tree without my permission! And now, after I've given you a simple task to make up for this _avalanche_ of failure – getting one comatose prisoner from A to B – _you fucked that one up, too!_ Where did they hire you people from, a temp agency?!"

"Mr Northwest-"

"Oh shut up and leave me alone. I have dead relatives and bastards to attend to, and the last thing I need is for you to start vomiting again. Get moving, and don't contact me again until Wendy Corduroy is on the ground and ready for implantation. Go on, get out and take your extra troops with you."

"Very well, sir. If there's anything you need-"

"I'll do it myself. Now fuck off and get back to scrubbing latrines with your tongue or whatever you do when you're not making an idiot of yourself in public. Go. Disappear. Vanish."

There was an awkward pause, as Lieutenant Waltramm hastily scurried away, hastily followed by the troops he'd requested.

Polonius watched them go, unable to keep the sneer of disgust off his face. For this, he was having to part with almost half of his mortal defenders; by now, the command centre was so tied up in repair efforts, they needed all the reinforcements they could get. All told, there were now only ten soldiers left on patrol around the summoning site. True, they were ten of the best troops available to the FIA, armed to the teeth with top-of-the-line firepower and equipped with the most powerful artefacts the FIA could spare, but still only ten.

By now, it was almost twelve o'clock, and activity at the summoning site had ground to a halt: with Dipper running loose, the ritual had no vessel for Bill to inhabit, leaving the dead Northwests with little else to do but stand around doing sweet FA. The blue glow was still being cast upon the surrounding woods and the arcane energies were still layered thick enough to frighten off any over-curious Gnomes, but it wasn't being used for anything really worthwhile; plus, in the light of the sun, it didn't look anywhere as exciting as it had during the night. Worst of all, Bill himself was clearly getting impatient: Polonius could _feel_ his master's irritation rippling from every fragment of the immortal spirit still contained within his dead flesh, oozing from the statue in pulsating waves of psychic force.

Muttering prayers of supplication to Bill, Polonius trudged over to the edge of the summoning site, where his mother stood in silence, treasonous interfering bitch that she was. Against all expectations, she'd been extracted from the command centre without killing or maiming any of the FIA staff, but Polonius was taking no further chances with her: after all, she'd already spoiled what had otherwise been a perfect victory and set Dipper free; if she ever mustered the willpower to rebel again, she might very well try to sabotage the ritual, a prospect which honestly didn't bear thinking about.

So, he'd had Pacifica restrained by any means necessary: both her arms had been severed at the shoulder, and both her legs had been sliced off at the knees; a heavy iron collar had been fastened around her neck and chained to the rusted carcass of car sitting nearby; and just for good measure, a lance of steel fashioned from a stop sign had been driven through her stomach and deep into the ground below her, keeping her pinned down. Plus, the stop-sign kept her from wriggling off the end of the lance. And yet, Polonius _still_ didn't think it was enough. In point of fact, he'd have gladly had her buried up to her neck in concrete, but alas, he needed to keep his mother portable until the ritual was complete, so dismemberment, collaring and impalement would have to do for now.

Looking at her now, Polonius found himself almost overwhelmed by hatred. Everything he'd ever despised about the world beyond his noble family was now slumped before him, defying him – defying _Bill_ – by her merest presence. She should have been nothing more than a husk of reanimated meat, helpless to resist his commands, subservient to his will and that of his master… and yet, she'd retained some semblance of self. This hateful, self-abasing little whore should have been nothing more than a puppet, incapable of independent thought; all her emotions and all the weaknesses that had drove her to rebel should have been squeezed into a dark corner of her psyche and left to watch as the peasants she'd betrayed the family for suffered and died. All of this should have been so, but somehow she'd rebelled – _again!_

And despite everything he'd done to make himself more like Bill, all the ceremonies and rituals and self-dismantling he'd undergone to cleanse himself of the weaknesses inherent to a human perspective on reality, Polonius couldn't help himself from inching closer to Pacifica as his mood darkened. He was seething with rage, a not entirely unexpected thing; after all, Bill himself was renowned for the divine wrath he inflicted upon those who dared oppose him… but Polonius also had questions that nobody would have bothered asking of Pacifica. After adopting the ways and mindset of Bill, once he'd transcended death, he'd been _above_ truly hating her as he had as a mortal: he'd hit her, yes, and he'd sent her off to watch Dipper suffering, but that was just part and parcel of being like his master. What he felt now… well, that was more like the whining, impotent anger he'd had back when he was still alive: just looking at Pacifica brought back embarrassing memories of all the arguments they'd shared, back when he was still weak enough to call her mother and foolish enough to find himself outwitted by her. And so, despite his better judgements, he found himself rounding on her once again.

"How are you still rebelling?" he hissed furiously.

Pacifica, predictably enough, said nothing.

"Everyone else in this family is under _my_ control, everyone from the lowliest bastard to Nathaniel Northwest himself, even those inbred cousins nobody likes to talk about! Why can you resist? What makes you different?!"

Silence. Pacifica's gaze remained fixed on the horizon.

" _Look at me!"_ Polonius roared, backhanding her viciously across the face. "Answer my questions! Why are you still rebelling?!"

If the slap had any effect on her, Pacifica showed no sign of it. If anything, there was more than a hint of a knowing smirk on her face. Having seen that infuriating smile more times than he cared to remember, it took all of Polonius' self-control not to rip her lower jaw off.

"Why did you rebel at all?" he demanded. "Why couldn't you have just followed Grandfather's orders? You could have had anything – _everything!_ Unlimited wealth, infinite power, eternal life, a place at Bill Cipher's side, and anything else you could have possibly asked for! I mean, if you'd really wanted a lifetime companion, you could have had anyone you liked if only you'd sided with Bill! Rich or poor, male or female, friend or consort, whatever you wanted; all you'd have had to do was point them out and Bill would have given them to you! Dipper could have been yours from the very beginning... but no, you betrayed Bill and you betrayed our family! You threw away everything and doomed _me_ to a lifetime of mediocrity among the comfortably well-off, and for the death of me, _I still can't understand why!_ Why did you do this? Why did you ruin us? Why did you have to be different?! _FUCKING TELL ME WHY!"_

And without warning, Pacifica turned to look at him, dead eyes suddenly sparking with awareness. Then, decomposing lungs rattling with the effort of producing sound, she began to speak:

"Because… I… am… more…"

"What?"

"More than… just… another link… in… the world's… worst… chain…"

Polonius let out a strangled snarl of rage. "This nonsense _again!_ The Northwests were the single richest and most influential family in the history of the United States, the world, even! We had the power to shape the economic and political destiny of the entire planet, _and_ we would have been due so much more when Bill seized control of the world! What about that says 'world's worst chain?' What right do the small have to judge us? Why could you have let one of the plebeian masses ever convince you that you were anything other than one of Earth's true nobility?"

"You… wouldn't… understand… and never have."

"And why is that, Pacifica? What the fuck makes you so special? What defect in your brain made you sell your birthright for the life of a self-made woman?"

Her smirk grew substantially. "I'm… _free,"_ she said smugly.

"What."

"The Northwest Family's power… is a lie. We're… slaves. Trained to be… as heartless as Bill… indoctrinated… addicted to wealth… and privilege. None of us realized… that we didn't have… any real power… of our own; it was all… due to Bill. All your life… you've… dreamed… of being a slave… and that was… what you bought from him: slavery." She sighed. "You made yourself… like him… killed yourself for him… you even call him… _master._ You made yourself… a slave… and now you… can't dream of a life… outside your shackles."

Polonius stared, brow furrowing with rage and incredulity. "Are you trying to convert me?" he whispered. "You think you can just spout off a few platitudes and I'll just collapse into your arms, begging for forgiveness?"

Pacifica shook her head sadly. "No, son. For one thing… I don't _have_ arms… remember?" She waggled her stumps by way of explanation. "For… another… it's too late. I'm dead… you're dead… and the family… died with us. And if you… get your way… nobody will even remember… the Northwest name. Bill… doesn't give rewards, Polonius: we're not… Henchmaniacs. We're just… puppets."

And at that moment, the commlink at Polonius trilled loudly – which was just as well, because he was too angry to think of a rebuttal.

"WHAT?!" he roared into the commlink.

"Sir, the helicopter just landed! Wendy Corduroy's being unloaded for transportation even as we speak."

"Finally! I want her en route to the Mystery Shack _yesterday,_ lieutenant, and have her escorted by your best troops as well – armoured vehicles, if you have any left!"

"Uh, Mr Northwest, we're still facing a lot of resistance from the Gnomes and we can't call in reinforcements for another forty-eight hours without arousing suspicions-"

"Lieutenant, perhaps it's hard to tell that I give a damn at this point; maybe it's the distance between us, maybe it's the limitation of the comms, or maybe it's the simple fact that _I don't actually give a damn._ Point is, I couldn't care less about your troop requirements: _we_ need the troops more than you do. However scary you think the Gnomes are, _I_ am a good deal scarier… and believe me, the Gnomes can only kill you. Disappoint me again, and I'll kill your entire family. Is that clear?"

"…perfectly, sir," Lieutenant Waltramm whimpered.

"Good. Now get going."

In the silence that followed, Polonius could only quiver in anticipation. _Okay,_ he thought to himself, _we're back on track. All we have to do is burnish Red up a bit, take the edge off all the atrophy and wasting, and then implant her. Then, we'll have our bait and a temporary vessel, and once we're able to effectively spread the word, our prize will come running. Shooting Star and Sixer won't fall for the trap, but Pine Tree hasn't grown up in the last forty years; he'll wriggle out of whatever shelter they've found for him and he'll take the bait – hook, line, sinker and gutting tools. And if he tries to fight, well, it's not as if he could ever bring himself to hurt his precious crush, is it?_

But even as he rejoiced, he once again felt long-dormant parts of his psyche flickering back into existence, flooding him with a sense of paranoia and anxiety that Bill would never have admitted to, and though Polonius was dead and had no nervous system left to make all the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, even he could feel the tiny spark of fear rippling through his being. Somewhere in the back of his head, a voice that should have fallen silent long ago muttered, _but what if that doesn't work?_

Suddenly enraged, he wracked his brain for an answer that could silence his own fears. _If all else fails, we've got one last ace in the hole,_ he told himself. _Sixer's dirty little secret. It's definitely a final resort option, but it'll be enough by that stage._

 _Yes, yes, everything is back on track at last. The family will be one with Bill Cipher, and we shall share in his glory. Soon, the world will be ours…_

* * *

Sometime later, the crowd of zombies surrounding the dilapidated statue briefly parted, allowing two terrified-looking corrections officers to enter the circle, carrying with them a single figure on a stretcher. For good measure, they were also carrying as much of her life support array as they could, strapped to their backs as it was.

The two only stayed long enough to deposit their prisoner and the necessary machines at the heart of the circle, just in front of Bill's statue, before hurrying away. And in the silence that followed, the haunting blue light cast upon the summoning site grew as Bill Cipher's burgeoning consciousness took shape just long enough to stare down at the figure slumped beneath him.

Time had not been kind to Wendy Corduroy, nor had the atrophying effects of the coma she'd been languishing in for the last few years. On the orders of Polonius and Powers, she'd been given successive treatments to ensure her longevity, but even with the very best doctors on call, there was only so much that they could do without Dipper's immortality. Already slim at the time the experimental drugs had rendered her comatose, the twenty years that followed had left her an emaciated husk of a human being, a withered mass of translucent skin drawn tight over badly-healed bones. Her once-luxuriant red hair had been reduced to a sparse mass of stringy grey strands that barely covered the dome of her skull; her limbs were warped and crooked from old breakages, bones that prison doctors had refused to set or re-set just in case she ever awoke; only her face remained relatively untouched, give or take a few old scars… but now it looked more like the waxen mask of a corpse than anything else.

To say that she wasn't fit for their purposes would have been putting it very mildly, but with a little of Bill's nascent power and a few artefacts from the FIA's collection, that could change. One by one, the zombies began to place the necessary items for the ritual of reshaping around Wendy's supine body: a human skull with golden teeth, a thurible of arcane incense, a twitching silver hand, and most importantly of all, a crystal pyramid surmounted by a single platinum-glass eye. As one, the dead Northwests began to chant in unison, reciting the words of an eldritch incantation – a spell of reshaping.

With a succession of loud crunches, Wendy's bones began to shift beneath her skin, incorrectly-set arms and legs wrenching themselves back into position, old fractures and hairline cracks simply erased themselves. Scars vanished, burns faded, wrinkles and other signs of ages simply evaporated; however, Bill stopped just short of rejuvenating her all the way back to her Weirdmageddon age: for one thing, he couldn't afford to waste too much energy on this process, and for another, Dipper would probably be suspicious if his crush didn't appear to have aged in the last forty years. So, they rewound her biological clock to the late thirties – old enough to show how much she'd changed, but still young enough so that Pine Tree would recognize her… and take the bait.

Sadly, one of the few things that the spell couldn't alter or restore was hair. Fortunately, this problem had been anticipated, and as the spell finally came to a close, a passable-looking wig was quickly fastened over the ruins of Wendy's scalp.

Normally, the next step in their plan would have required Bill to make a deal with Wendy's slumbering consciousness. However, cursory examination of her brain revealed that there was almost nothing left to make a deal with: two decades had destroyed all but a few paltry remains of her psyche, and none of them were concerned with thinking or dreaming. So, with no conscious mind to deal with, Bill and his retinue could take this body by force.

At the head of the crowd, Polonius directed the ritual of sacrifice, channelling Bill's willpower and casting it out across the assembled Northwest family – specifically those standing at the very edge of the congregation.

Here stood the outcasts of the bloodline: the bastards, the embarrassments, the deformed, the insane, the inbred, and countless other unfortunate by-products of the Northwest patriarchs' best efforts to spread their seed as far and wide as possible. Other families might have balked over such a campaign of unfaithfulness and indiscreet breeding, but Bill Cipher had made Nathaniel Northwest's mission very clear when they'd made their great pact: from that moment onward the bodies of Nathaniel's families were to serve as containers for Bill's essence by virtue of their blood alone, and the more children were born to carry that essence, the better – even if it did result in a few freaks. These unfortunates were never afforded a portrait in the Northwest Mansion's gallery, and most were never recorded in the family tree – not the _official_ one, at any rate; quite a few of them had been confined to a single hidden room for the entirety of their short, unhappy lives. But all were united in death, and even the lowliest bastard was granted a place in the Northwest family crypt, in preparation for the day they would rise and do their master's will (though admittedly the bastards and invalids would be obliged to wait in crates rather than coffins).

Now they were here… and ready to give up the burden they had carried since birth.

Casting out his combined will across the fringes of the crowd, Polonius began to slowly excise the tiny seedlings of Bill's essence they held, magically disconnecting them from the energies that animated them. One by one, the Northwest outcasts collapsed to the ground, their vacant corpses disgorging a single flickering mote of blue light as they died once more. By the end of it, almost a third of the crowd had been culled for their fragments of essence, and a familiar glowing shape was beginning to coalesce in the darkening sky above the statue. None of the outcasts possessed enough energy to conjure a new body for Bill – there wasn't enough essence in the entire family for that – but through their sacrifice, he would have enough strength to walk on earthly feet… and once the perfect vessel was acquired, much, _much_ more.

As the remaining Northwests looked on, Bill poured the accumulated essence into Wendy Corduroy's mindless body with an almighty flex of his reawakening power, saturating her vacant brain with his energy and making a new home for his consciousness inside her skull. Right on cue, Wendy's body jerked upright, her body wrenching itself into a sitting position… and when she opened her eyes, incandescent blue light gleamed deep within her pupils.

Bill Cipher looked out upon the world with human eyes for the first time in decades, and in spite of himself, a horrible smile spread across his borrowed face. Yes, it was a vessel unfit for permanent use, and even with the sacrifice of so many Northwests, there was only so much power he could utilize while in this body… but it would be enough.

At least until Dipper could be found.

* * *

By the time the sun finally dipped below the horizon, Mabel and Ford were already in motion.

Commandeering a modified golf-cart from the bunker's meagre "garage," they loaded Dipper into the back and trundled into the depths of the forest as quickly as the souped-up engine could manage. Fortunately, the Gnomes weren't patrolling the area too vigorously: General Schmebulock was marshalling his forces for an assault on the FIA detachment near the Mystery Shack, and apart from a handful of scouts, the shallower end of the forest was almost empty.

Plus, the artefacts that Ford had stolen from the capture team worked just as well on vehicles, as it turned out, allowing them to almost-invisibly bypass the few scouts encountered along the trail: with a talisman attached to each corner of the cart's roof, the entire forest was open to them.

As such, it didn't take much effort to reach the first cache. It was a fairly simple affair – just a compartment hidden beneath a pile of boulders, really. However, once they'd found the secret door and entered the code, they quickly found that the cache itself not only contained the necessary parts, but it was also deep enough to comfortably hold Dipper for the time being. So, once they'd supplied him with enough food, water and oxygen to last the next four days, they shut him inside and told him not to leave unless absolutely necessary.

Unfortunately, the next stage of the plan was nowhere near as successful: it should have been a relatively easy matter to get the Gnome army's attention once they'd removed the stealth talismans, especially considering that General Schmebulock and his ancestors had despised the inhabitants of the Mystery Shack ever since the first attacks on Gravity Falls had soured the relationship between humans and Gnomes. But for now, it seemed as though the FIA was considered the bigger threat, so few of the scouts payed any attention no matter how many times Mabel had honked the cart's horn at them.

After almost an hour of fruitless honking, the two of them brought the golf-cart to a halt on the edge of the Enchanted Glade, and hastily reviewed their approach.

"What the hell is _wrong_ with these damn things?" Mabel demanded. "We're not good enough for them all of a sudden?"

"You're taking this very personally."

"Look, I'm not getting jealous, I'm just arguing priority: the new invaders are no longer the biggest threat! We crippled the FIA back at the command centre, we've killed their director, and now we're wandering through Gnome territory. I think that deserves at least a few alarm bells from these pointed-headed bastards."

Ford sighed. "Would it be worth pointing out the fact that there's only two of us?"

"Big deal. They were happy enough to launch over five hundred consecutives attacks on the Mystery Shack over the last few decades, and there were only two of us _then_ more often than not."

"The key word being "the Mystery Shack" and not "us," I think. I'm no expert on Gnome psychology, but I think they decided that the combined threat of the Mystery Shack, the FIA and the zombies was worthier of their attention. Unfortunately, we can't attack the army head-on just to get their attention, not with Bill's followers so close by – they'd sound the alarm on the spot."

"Alright then, what about the Gnome burrows? The Enchanted Glade itself, even? Those are still pretty densely populated, last I looked: if we trespass on either of those, it just might be enough."

"It might. Question is, how do we get their attention? If we go in while still obscured, make a lot of noise and get out invisibly, they might not be able to follow our trail-"

"-unless we make a _lot_ of noise."

"But if we try to leave the area visibly, they might just be able to flank us and kill us. We're going to have to think very carefully about this one, Mabel."

"Look, as long as we still have the amulets…"

Mabel paused.

"Ford," she said quietly, "When we started this mission, we had four cloaking talismans on us, right?"

"…why do you ask?"

"We appear to be missing one."

"And there's no chance it could have just fallen off?"

"None. In fact, it looks as though someone's cut the edge of the awning off along with it."

"This wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that someone appears to have stolen my air-horn, would it?"

"That depends. Where was the air-horn last you looked?"

"My pocket."

"Oh… _crap._ Do you think Dipper remembers the way to the Gnome burrows?"

By way of an answer, there was a distant roar of an air-horn, followed by the distinctive chipmunk-like shriek of several hundred unsuspecting Gnomes screaming in fear.

Mabel sighed and hid her face in her hands.

"God _damn it_ , Dipper," she groaned. "Why couldn't you have just sat still _just_ for once?"

In spite of himself, Ford actually managed a wry grin. "I seem to recall Stanley asking the same question about you and Dipper before Weirdmageddon," he said smugly.

"Really not the time for smartass remarks, Ford."

In the distance, the air-horn sounded again, much closer this time, and now mingled with the sound of several Gnome scouts ringing alarm bells… and even further away, there came the sound of something massive slowly thundering towards them, accompanied by a deafening bellow of "SCHMEBULOOOOOOCK!"

"Well," said Mabel, "on the upside, I think he might just have done our job for us. On the downside, I'm am going to very gently strangle him when we catch up."

There was a pause of perhaps five minutes, and then the suddenly-visible Dipper skidded to a halt next to the cart. "They're on their way," he panted. "If you want to lead them to the command centre, now's the time. Um, I know I probably shouldn't be tagging along, but-"

Without waiting for him to finish his sentence, Mabel grabbed Dipper by the arm and hauled him aboard the golf-cart; then, the moment she was certain that Dipper was secure in his perch behind them, she brought her foot slamming down hard on the gas pedal.

A moment later, they were rocketing away through the darkened forest, modified engines catapulting them towards the road at a meteoric pace – even as the distant roars of "SCHMEBULOCK!" grew steadily closer.

"And that," said Ford absently, "Is our cue to let the Sheriff and the Deputy out of the bag…"

* * *

Somewhere deep beneath the Mystery Shack, hidden behind a solid steel bulkhead and a hermetically-sealed door, a long-dormant stasis capsule was slowly rumbling to life. A glistening chrysalis of stainless steel and crystalline glass, this one-of-a-kind suspended animation chamber had been built specifically to contain specimens too fragile for cryogenic storage – or too precious to be stored in the bunker… and as it happened, the current residents of the capsule was _both._ Keeping the chamber's contents paused in time for the immediate future, this revolutionary design was the only thing that could keep the capsule's inhabitants stable until needed.

Apart from the capsule, the room was empty except for a long set of monorail tracks leading into a tunnel burrowing deep into the depths of Gravity Fall's underground; a single train was waiting by the pedestal, silent but well-maintained. At Ford's signal, automated mechanisms whirred to life all around the capsule: from the roof, a heavy set of metal pincers plucked the container from its housing and stasis emitters, then ferried it into positon aboard the waiting train; electronic systems aboard the train flickered on, priming engines and releasing the brakes; finally, the capsule itself began to almost-imperceptibly shift in its new housing, as the stasis field wore off and the two residents began to wake from their slumber.

" _Good evening, Sheriff,"_ said the computerized voice of Nurse. _"Good evening, Deputy. Stanford and Mabel have need of your services. Please prepare yourselves for immediate transportation: now transmitting details on potential targets…"_

And with that, the monorail roared to life, propelling them down the tunnel at high speed. They had only about a thousand yards to travel, but they were picking up space for every step of the journey, until at last, the monorail hit a steep slope and rocketed out into the cold night air. With a muffled _phut_ of internal mechanisms in action, the train car catapulted the capsule free of its housing and flung it into the air.

For almost half a mile, the capsule soared through the sky like a comet, until at the very apex of its ascent before its downward plunge began, parachutes deployed from its chassis, slowing the capsule's descent as it gradually descended towards the distant shape of the FIA command centre. Moments later, it landed with a thud on three articulated legs, gently depositing its cargo in the middle of the road just across from the centre; with most of the sensors in the building trained on the forest, nobody noticed the radar-shielded pod behind them until it was too late.

There was a five-second pause, as the capsule's internal systems double-checked the weaponry of its passengers, making sure they were loaded and ready for action. Then, the capsule wall slid open, and a single misshapen figure stepped out into the gloom of the night.

The death of Gravity Falls hadn't occurred all at once: it had been years in the making, the product of a war of attrition waged by governments and corporations alike, one violent incursion after another gradually destroying the town and its populace. Bit by bit, the human residents had either been whittled away, either being forced to flee or ending up killed in the crossfire; the Gnome uprisings had accelerated things dramatically, and by the time the Shroud had been erected to protect them, there was almost nobody human left alive in the entire town except for the inhabitants of the Mystery Shack, and a few desperate scavengers huddled amongst the ruins of what had once been Gravity Falls.

Sheriff Blubs and Deputy Durland, married long ago and unwilling to leave the town they loved so much, had been the last to depart… and ultimately, they never left at all.

As the demands for Dipper's surrender grew ever-more vociferous, Blubs had started to take the job of policework much more seriously than usual, securing the war-torn streets of the town with a devotion that Mabel hadn't seen since the Quentin Trembley incident. While law and order still remained a priority, he successfully arrested several prospective assassins before they got anywhere near the Mystery Shack; later, he helped organize the defences with impressive resolve, deputizing capable civilians into an effective private army to protect the remaining citizens and loaning as much police-issue equipment as he could to the defenders up at the Shack. For his part, Deputy Durland did quite well in keeping up, ensuring Blubs' safety as best as he could – even bringing down an attack helicopter by crashing his police cruiser into it. But in the end, there was so much that the two of them could do.

On the day when the outside world had declared all-out-war on Gravity Falls, Blubs had ended up on the receiving end of a fragmentation grenade. His body pierced in a dozen pieces by a lethal hail of shrapnel, he was barely alive when Mabel had found him; conventional medicine couldn't save him, at for the longest time, it looked as though the defenders would be reduced to three. Ford had hit upon a unique solution, however: by being symbiotically fused with the body of another human, the Sheriff could survive his injuries, his host's body allowing him to gradually regenerate and heal until their merged internal organs functioned as one.

Durland, ever-devoted to his husband's welfare, had volunteered to serve as the host and allow Blubs to live on – as a part of him.

The treatment worked, and Blubs and Durland became one, their minds and bodies integrated into one autonomous gestalt. Once they'd recovered, the two men had insisted on returning to work: as it turned out, their newly-merged physique granted them a significant boost in strength and resilience, and they were quick to take advantage of this in their efforts to defend the Mystery Shack. Weighing themselves down with the most powerful of all Ford's prototype weaponry, they'd defeated entire armies of Gnomes time and again, augmenting their strength with experimental cyborg implants that no sane human would have dared touch. Together, the two lovers were unstoppable.

In the end, the Gnomes were forced to counter the advantage with magic, cursing the Sheriff and the Deputy with a powerful hex that gnawed at their internal organs and withered their circulatory system. Ultimately, they had less than four month left to live. No invention could cure them, and no magic could be found to undo the curse. Ford suggested separating the two, hoping that the spell might be broken if it no longer affected a singular being – or at the very least, that one of the two might survive. However, both Blubs and Durland refused: they would remain together until their death.

Unwilling to say goodbye and unwilling to use their greatest advantage against their enemies in the forest, Mabel and Ford were forced to take drastic action: with the permission of Blubs and Durland, they prepared a specially-designed stasis chamber in which the gestalt could be allowed to remain in until their services were needed.

And now, after barely five activations in the past few years, the Sheriff and the Deputy lumbered into the night.

Up close, they appeared more like a spider than anything else: four legs clattered across the ground with impossible coordination, mechanized gyroscopes and sensors built into their cyborg implants allowing their fused bodies to navigate the ruins without even thinking about it. Both sets of arms held a rifle large enough to qualify as a bazooka to lesser physiques, and their shoulders bristled with built-in cannons and artillery pods; their torsos were heavily armoured both over and under the skin, their fused skin augmented with subdermal plating to keep them safe from heavy arms fire and shrapnel. Their eyes were hidden by gleaming crystal visors, indicating every single predicted target in advance and keeping their faces well-protected from headshots.

But at a distance, they might have looked more like two very heavily-armed men standing back to back – right up until a hypothetical observer noticed the fact that they appeared to be conjoined at the head…

And the neck…

And the back.

There was a pause, as the Sheriff and the Deputy took a deep breath for the first time in almost eight years.

"Ready, darlin'?"

"Always, honey."

They shared a smile (and though neither of them could see it, of course, they knew it had happened – one of the many benefits of a merged nervous system).

Then, shouldering their rifles and reading their implanted weaponry, they began the slow, ponderous march towards the command centre.

* * *

A/N: Up next... you'll have to guess!


	11. Reaching Out For Victory

A/N: Aaaaand I'm back, ladies and gentlemen! We're cruising swiftly towards conclusion, and I can only hope it's been as fun for you as it has been for me!

Read, review and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Gravity Falls is still not mine.

* * *

Lieutenant Waltramm mopped his brow with his handkerchief, and watched grimly as the gnome horde surged towards them.

From the moment that Shmebulock's army came hurtling down the street towards the FIA's command centre, all eyes had been focussed on the distant figures of the gnomes and their auxiliaries. Immediately, the base was placed on high alert: all patrols were hastily recalled as reinforcements, all technicians were assigned to the rooftop gun turrets and forward cannons, all armoured vehicles were directed to form a barrier against the incoming attack, and all soldiers left in the building were immediately funnelled towards defensive positions near the command centre's weak points – most prominently the gaping hole in its hull, which was now barely covered by a hastily-erected barricade of metal and plastic.

It wasn't the best example of siege defences they could manage, but it would have to do. The Pines' attack had taken out a sizeable chunk of the base personnel and left several gaping holes in their defences, some of which couldn't be so easily patched up. For good measure, reprisals from the gnomes had only made things worse: sabotage, magical bombardment and guerrilla assaults had all done their part in whittling away at their numbers over the course of the last fifteen hours; tanks had broken down, sensor arrays had gone on the fritz, and several patrols had simply vanished entirely.

Meanwhile, HQ hadn't responded to their latest request for reinforcements, which wasn't entirely unexpected. After all, the Agency had gone all-in on this campaign, emptied their inventories, called in every last favour, and made use of every single legal and illegal connection they had just to secure the resources needed for this mission. Other than their arrangement with Monoc Prison – which they'd just called in – the Agency had no other means of gaining reinforcements except through official channels, an extremely slow process only further delayed by the web of red tape they had to cut through. Worse still, official channels meant drawing increased attention from the White House, especially if anyone had made the mistake of insisting on urgency.

The President had given his blessing for this mission, had even provided them with most of the "legitimate" ordnance for the task, but if word got out that the FIA was taking orders from a private citizen, he'd shut them down in an instant – especially if he happened to get a good look at the current state of Polonius Northwest and his entourage. And that was the most optimistic possibility on the horizon: if the President learned of the Northwest clan's current patron, he'd probably make sure that every single collaborator among them spent the rest of their lives in prison… or in unmarked graves. The offer of immortality could cover a multitude of sins, but it couldn't cover sedition, treason, or pacts with extradimensional entities.

For now, they were on their own.

But in spite of the situation, Lieutenant Waltramm still found himself staring out at the oncoming horde with something almost approaching optimism. In Director Powers' absence, he'd vowed before Polonius Northwest that they would maintain their grip on Gravity Falls for as long as necessary: they had troops on loan from the Marine Corps, state-of-the-art armoured vehicles, experimental weaponry right from the Pentagon's shadiest contractors, and they even had magical artefacts that Bill himself had provided. With all that, combined with perseverance and determination, they had everything they needed to make sure that their toehold on the ruined town would remain stable.

Tonight they would prove, after all the long years of public humiliation and governmental coal-raking, that they were worthy of the accolades, that the FIA had well and truly earned its place among the greatest institutions of the United States.

He was still thinking this when the first explosion rocked the command centre, sending personnel flying in all directions and knocking out roughly half the consoles on the bridge.

"What the hell was _that?"_ he demanded, as technicians struggled to haul themselves upright.

"Focussed energy attack to the rear generators!" one of them shouted. "Probably a heavy-duty plasma cannon!"

"But where the hell did it come from?"

"I can't tell yet, sir! That blast took out most of our sensory array – but if I'd had to guess, I'd say right behind us."

For a split second, Waltramm almost stopped to ask questions: in that moment, he wanted to know how any of this could have happened. He wanted to know how _any_ of the gnomes could have gotten behind them while the sensors were still up; he wanted to know how this mob of primitives could have gotten hold of anything as sophisticated as plasma weaponry – because unless they'd started working with the Pines family all of a sudden, there was no way in hell any gnome could possibly field a working energy weapon. Most of all, he wanted to know who or what could possibly be operating the cannon: he'd seen Stanford Pines' schematics for heavy plasma artillery back in mission briefing, almost a lifetime ago it seemed, and he clearly remembered Director Powers stating that these cannons were too heavy to be used for anything other than stationary turrets and vehicle-mounted guns. Unless the gnome army had summoned its Manotaur auxiliaries for this battle (which were still a good fifteen minutes away, according to their instruments), there was no way in the world any of them could be wielding a plasma weapon. And even if they had, even if the gnomes were forming into colossi again, none of them would be able to work the controls on these damn things.

He wanted to ask all these questions and more, the most prominent of which was _how could this have happened? We should have been prepared for everything! We_ were _prepared for everything!_

But there simply wasn't time for questions, recriminations or reasoning. All that mattered was that they were under attack on two fronts… and they might not have enough personnel left for either.

"Get those backup generators online!" he barked. "Reroute all power to the forward guns and turrets; I want us firing on the gnome army _yesterday!"_

As an afterthought, he tapped his comlink and added, "Sergeant, I want all the vehicles up front to advance on those gnomes: fire everything you've got, launch every ordnance you have, crush the little bastards under your treads if necessary – you need to buy us as much time as possible! I'm going to need the remaining vehicles to the left and right to circle the base: someone's attacking us from behind!"

There was a flabbergasted pause from the sergeant. "But sir, we've only got eight jeeps and two tanks on the left and right-"

" _I don't care!"_ Waltramm howled. "Get those vehicles in motion _now!"_ He hung up, and switched to another channel. "All soldiers inside the command centre are to move to defensive positions on the rear; I say again-"

Another explosion shook the command centre; this time, a beam of dazzling blue light erupted through the bridge, boring a hole through the deck, reducing three control consoles to molten slag, punching another hole in the ceiling, and triggering off another explosion. For the next thirty seconds, the bridge was nothing but smoke, screams and confusion, broken only by the muffled roar of another blast tearing through the building and the occasional meaty _thud_ of a body being flung against the bulkhead.

Eventually, Waltramm managed to clamber out from under the body of the soldier that had collapsed on top of him and haul himself upright. "Damage report!" he hollered.

No response.

"Report in, dammit! And someone get that fire out!"

The commlink crackled to life: "Lieutenant!" howled an agonized voice, almost drowned out by the clamour of squealing tyres, protesting engines and deafening spates of gunfire. "We're under fire! We've lost three jeeps already and the enemy isn't responding to anything we've fired at it! The tanks are holding out, but one of them's on fire, and the other one is-"

Another colossal explosion rippled across the area.

"We've just lost one of the tanks, sir!"

"But what kind of force are you up against? How many of them are there?"

There was a distinctly embarrassed pause.

"One, sir!"

Waltramm was once again opening his mouth to demand explanations when his commlink once again screamed for attention – this time with an urgent transmission from the head of the squadron of armoured vehicles guarding their forward defences.

"We're being overrun, sir!" he screamed. "There's just too many of them; they're too small to be targeted accurately and we don't have the firepower to carpetbomb them!"

"Use your flamethrowers, you idiot!"

"We've _tried_ that! They keep scurrying out of the way-"

There was a scream of terror, followed by a loud, metallic _crunch._

"They're swarming us!" the sergeant howled. "They're crawling onto our treads and trying to get in! If this keeps on, sir, we're going to have the little bastards driving tanks before long!"

"Just hold the line! We need to keep this base operation until Mr Northwest has finished-"

"Sir!" one of the technicians hollered. "I've managed to some of our peripheral sensors back on line, and we've got incoming from the southeast, approaching the gap in our defences!"

 _Dear God in heaven, what now?_ Waltramm thought. Out loud, he barked "What is it? I need all turrets focussed on it immediately!"

"It… it looks like a golf cart, sir."

"... _what?!"_

"I'm just reporting what I see, sir."

There was an urgent bipping sound from one of the remaining consoles.

"We've also got eyes on the attacker at the rear, sir; turrets are having trouble getting a fix on whoever it is… but I think it's making a beeline for the weak spot in the bulkhead-"

"ALL HANDS TO THE BREACH!" Waltramm bellowed into his commlink. "I SAY AGAIN, ALL HANDS TO THE BREACH ON THE LOWER LEVELS!"

"But what about our men in the gun turrets?"

"Oh, screw the gun turrets? They can't hit the attacker now that he's under the Command Centre, and they can't hit the gnomes without hitting our tanks! Now get moving! I WANT EVERYONE WHO CAN HOLD A GUN READY TO REPEL BOARDERS _RIGHT NOW!"_

* * *

"You think they're buying it?" Ford shouted, barely audible over the howl of the wind and the eardrum-bursting cacophony of gunfire, explosions, tortured engines and tearing metal.

Mabel grinned and spun the wheel, sending the golf cart on a vast, weaving arc through the tumbledown buildings and around the smouldering wreckage of military vehicles. "Hard for them not to," she replied with a laugh. "I mean, have you _heard_ the ruckus those two are kicking up?"

As if in answering, there was a loud blare of chintzy rock music – of the kind that could have only been produced by a karaoke machine – and a moment later, the amplified voices of Blubs and Durland rang out across the ruins of Main Street, belting out the chorus of "Taking Over Midnight" to the accompaniment of plasma blasts, gunfire and exploding jeeps. Even from here, it was apparent that the FIA troops were losing the battle, and the addition of karaoke seemed to be sending the survivors fleeing in the opposite direction at a truly impressive speed; in fact, from what Dipper could see, as they rocketed down the alleyways towards the command centre, most of the troops weren't even bothering with vehicles any more, and were simply hightailing it on foot – many of them ending up right in the path of the oncoming gnome army in the process. All the while, Blubs and Durland's duet echoed triumphantly across the war zone, defiant, gleeful and unconquered.

Dipper, meanwhile, could only blink in confusion. The revelation of their "secret weapon's" true identity had been shocking enough, but the musical accompaniment had made this little assault just a little too much for him to grasp. "Where did they get a _karaoke machine_ from?" he could only ask. "I thought they only had enough room in the capsule for their equipment."

"I built it into their body armour," Ford explained.

" _Why?!"_

Ford shrugged. "Why not? It came up in the brainstorming phase and Blubs seemed to like the idea. Plus, it meant we didn't have to find space in the Mystery Shack for that damn machine."

At long last, Mabel brought the golf cart skidding to a halt directly across from the command centre, and stopped for a moment to ready her sidearm and study the building through her binoculars.

"Right," she said briskly. "From the looks of things, everyone's being kept pretty busy at the breach. As long as the gnomes are busy swarming their vehicles, there won't be any chance of reinforcements, so now's the time to get in. From what little I can work out from diagnostic scans, I can just about pick up a large concentration of magical energies towards the centre of the complex, so that's probably where they're keeping all their artefacts and talismans; I'm not picking up anything paranormal about the defences, so it's probably not protected by anything nastier than a code lock, a bulkhead and a few gun turrets. Ford, you get what you need from the vaults, I'll tackle covering fire. Dipper, you stay hidden at all times and do not budge from your seat unless I tell you so: as long as you stay under the awning, you can't be seen, and as long as you stay behind this reinforced window, you won't be hit by any of the bullets that are going to be flying around in there. Any questions?"

Dipper tentatively held up a hand. "Would it be worth asking about what we're actually planning to do with whatever we find in the vault?"

"I don't know, ask your Grunkle."

"Look," said Ford, wearily, "I know it's asking a lot, but just bear with me for now: I won't know if we'll be able to properly pull this off until I can actually access the vault's contents. If I'm right about the kind of artefacts they're hoarding, then we can afford to start getting excited about what'll happen next, and I'll be able to detail the strategy I have in mind. If not, we'll have to come up with a new plan once we've settled for the consolation prize of reducing the command centre to molten slag."

"But there's so much more you haven't explained! I mean, I you didn't even tell me about Blubs and Durland until a few minutes ago, and there's still all these little things you mention when you think I'm not listening: what's this "Lazarus Vector" you keep talking about? And what are we supposed to do if we can actually win? We've talked about this before, and we still don't have any idea what we're going to do once we've stopped Bill!"

Mabel offered a mirthless chuckle. "Come on, Dipper; you were working with him back in the whole Project Mentem debacle, you know him better than that. When Ford's in a secretive mood, the only way to get info out of him is with a corkscrew, and I left my corkscrew back at the Mystery Shack with the really good wine."

There was a deafening explosion from the rear of the command centre, and the blazing wreckage of a jeep ploughed through a tumbledown wall a few feet from the golf-cart, accompanied by a cloud of distinctly person-shaped debris.

"And on that note," Mabel continued, "I think we should shelve this conversation until such time as we're not in danger of being caught and shot. Dipper, fasten your seatbelt and get ready to do exactly as I say. Ford, get those cutting tools ready. Are we all ready?"

"About as much as we ever will be."

"Good. Now… let's GO!"

Flicking a switch on the dashboard, Mabel sent the cart rocketing forward with a burst of acceleration that only decades of illegal modification and at least three booster rockets could have possibly managed.

However, even with the improbable speed on hand, the golf cart was still travelling on a horizontal beeline for the command centre's flank, and for three heart-stopping seconds, it seemed as though their current course could only end in an undignified collision with the nearest bulkhead and the otherwise-flimsy cart being smashed to pieces. But at the last minute, Mabel hammered another button on the dashboard, and suddenly the cart was travelling _vertically,_ propelled sharply upwards by a series of jump-jets built into the chassis: the modified jalopy rocketed high into the air, first to ten feet, then twenty feet, before finally stopping at the thirty-foot mark and beginning a rapid descent towards the command centre's roof.

On some dim and distant level, Dipper was aware that he was hollering in exhilaration, as if the whole death-defying plunge was nothing more than the biggest ride at the theme park, but for the moment, all he could concentrate on was the sight of the command centre looming closer and closer, the roar of guns from the golf-cart's front bumper – and the spectacular crash of the facility's roof cracking open like an egg as the twin bombshells hammered home.

Tearing through the upper breach like paper, the cart hammered to a stop on two wheels and slammed down hard on the charred remains of a bridge console. Through the smoke and sparks from hanging wires, Dipper got a brief glimpse of a uniformed guard making a grab for his rifle, before Mabel drew her sidearm and nailed him squarely between the eyes without even deigning to glance in his direction.

"Right then," said Mabel, over the thud of the body crumpling to the floor. "It looks like the diversion worked. So far, so good. Now, the vault should only be a few feet from the bridge, so let's get moving!"

* * *

" **I'm back,"** Bill whispered softly, Wendy's voice now reverberating with his own innate power.

As one, the assembled Northwests lowered themselves to their knees, Polonius naturally taking the lead and burying his face in the dirt for good measure. The sight of so many ex-humans abasing themselves before him should have given him a thrill beyond all measure, and the possession of a physical body should have left him almost euphoric with triumph. He should have been cackling, shrieking, howling with glee just as he had back when Weirdmageddon had begun. And yet, he couldn't: after so many years spent death diffused across so many hosts had dulled his enthusiasm… and besides, he had not achieved a victory worthy of his old maniacal self.

Yet.

In the meantime, he stood and left the sensations of Wendy's stolen body wash over him.

" **Physical form for the first time in forty years… and you know what? It's** _ **really**_ **underwhelming."**

Not for the first time that day, Bill found himself glaring down at his faithful servant with something not unlike contempt. Granted, it wasn't _real_ contempt – for that, he would have had to give half a damn about this particular servant; right here and now, Polonius Northwest didn't even qualify as something Bill would happily crush under his shoe.

On the upside, Wendy Corduroy's face had just the right kind of eyes for baleful death-glares, so he could give the spineless little bastard some idea of just how enraged he was at this latest blunder.

" **Funny thing, Polonius,"** said Bill. **"You said you had this playground under control."**

"Please…"

" **You said you had the entire Northwest family dancing to your tune."**

"Bill, I-"

" **You said I could rely on you."**

"Oh you can, believe me, you can, it's just that-"

" **Just that** _ **what?**_ **Somehow, you lost Dipper, you lost the rest of the Pines family, you lost the advantage of surprise, and now you're losing your grip on this hick town. Not impressed, Polonius. Not impressed at all."**

Polonius coughed nervously. "In my defence, _I_ didn't lose Dipper. That was Director Powers' fault."

" **And yet, you were the one who decided to leave your zombie mom in the room with him. Smooth move, pal. Reeeeeaaaal smooth."**

"If you'd just let me explain-"

" **Why? You tried to make yourself more like me, kiddo. Last I looked, I don't like giving explanations to anyone. Me, I'm still pissed that the first halfway decent body I've found myself in after forty years trapped inside a statue isn't the chosen vessel I arranged, but my chosen vessel's childhood crush…** _ **and**_ **we had to waste precious energy getting me in here, energy I could have better spent on a post-possession** _ **massacre!**_ **I'm stuck in a body that can barely contain the energy of my being, much less channel it. I mean,** **after all the screw-ups along the way, I'm surprised you didn't end up breaking this damn thing while you were prepping it for possession."**

As he spoke, Bill Cipher absently stretched the limbs of his new vessel, studying the way Wendy's muscles flexed and pumped with every move he made. For a time, he basked the faint aches and pains rippling across the newly-healed tendons; then, he took it a step further, grapping one finger and twisting it around like a cherry stem, pushing it as far back as it could possibly go – just so he could delight in the hilarity of the pain he could freely inflict on this meaningless bag of meat. In the end, though, it didn't satisfy: as funny as it was to debase Wendy's body, especially after all the trouble she'd given him during Weirdmageddon, it just didn't have the same thrill as abusing Pine Tree's body. There was no element of transgression here, none of the wicked sense of comedy that could only be achieved by vigorously smashing a twelve-year-old's arm in a kitchen drawer.

The fact that he still hadn't made it to his chosen vessel only made it a thousand times more galling.

Meanwhile, Polonius was still babbling like an idiot, all but grovelling before him. If this chinless turd had devoted himself to mimicking Bill's personality, he was doing it in unnoticeable ways. Either that, or he just didn't have the minerals to keep up the act in the face of his idol.

 _Brilliant,_ he thought. _**This**_ _was supposed to be my emissary in the land of the living: another Northwest with delusions of competence._

"I promise you," Polonius simpered, "Dipper will be recaptured within the hour, and the strategy can proceed as planned."

" **Cute. You come up with that one yourself, or did you get that one out of Baby's First Book Of Excuses? Assuming you weren't too busy chewing those cardboard pages, right? Or did granddaddy teach you that one when you were busy trying to gain wealth and power by osmosis? I mean, you had to have learned** _ **something**_ **before you started learning from me."**

"Bill, if you'd just let me-"

" **No. More. Fucking. Excuses. Get off your knees and get to work. And whatever you're planning on doing, I'd do it pretty damn pronto: your command centre's on fire."**

"…WHAT?"

" **Another thing you might have noticed if you weren't spending so much time kissing my ass. Now get to it."**

* * *

"…medic!"

Blinking away tears as he stumbled through clouds of acrid smoke, Waltramm coughed and called out again, hoping against hope that he could somehow make himself heard against the blaring alarms and the thunderous explosions from outside. No luck: either the medics couldn't hear him, they were too busy treating the other casualties, they were all running for their lives… or they were dead.

The latter seemed terrifyingly probable.

By now, the mysterious karaoke-singing intruder had reduced most of the lower levels to charred skeletons of bulkheads and deep, bubbling lakes of molten metal; anyone who'd been unlucky enough to try and stop him had died – either by incineration, dismemberment, disintegration, or just being blown to gory chunks of ex-person by the rocket launchers on their attacker's shoulders. Outside, the gnome army had just about dismantled the forward defences, ripping the vehicles apart from the inside out, and the manotaurs had just about finished off the survivors; in hindsight, it hadn't _just_ been the army, but every gnome in Gravity Falls, united in one vast, infuriated wave. One way or another, nobody was responding to the commlink anymore.

For all Waltramm knew, he was the only one left.

Another lance of pain sunk deep into the wound at his shoulder, and he hastily reapplied pressure, hoping against hope he could find help before the bleeding got any worse. Right now, though, his chances didn't look very good, not with most of the staff layering the floor in a gory carpet. And where the hell _was_ he, anyway? He could barely see where he was going through all this smoke; he could have been right next to the operating theatre and he'd never know it.

From somewhere below him, another explosion ripped through the building, and the red emergency lighting flickered out as the last backup generator went offline, plunging the ruins of the command centre into coffinlike darkness. Swearing, Waltramm fumbled for the torch at his belt, knowing it wouldn't do much good…

And then he heard it.

With emergency power offline, the alarms were dead and the command centre was silent except for the occasional blast from below, so there was nothing to stop him from hearing a familiar voice saying "Have you finished yet? We're on a tight schedule here."

Mabel Pines.

Bloody Murder Mabel was back in the building… and by the sounds of things, she was just around the corner.

"I've got everything I needed," another familiar voice replied. "Their collection is as good as ours."

"Perfect. It's time we got out of here; you drive this time, and I'll provide covering fire. All strapped in, Dipper?"

"Ready when you are."

Waltramm's heart very slowly skipped a beat as he recognized the voices – and the names. Not only was Stanford Pines in the base again, but so was Dipper Pines.

Subject Zero was just a fork in the road away.

There was a rumble of something like an engine from not too far away, and he realized with a thrill of excitement that this might be his last, best chance to set things right: the two of them were busy loading up whatever they'd stolen, and as long as they weren't watching their flanks, he had the element of surprise. Two quick double-taps, and Dipper would be his for the taking. Polonius would forgive him his mistakes, Bill would reward him for serving so capably, and all would be right with the world.

Waltramm very slowly drew his gun.

He could do this.

He could stop them.

 _He could save the day!_

With one almighty scream of fury, he launched himself around the corner – just in time to get a good look at the nine hundred and fifty pounds of modified golf-cart barrelling down the corridor towards him. With only a split-second to react, he could only gawp in confusion as the rocket-powered vehicle slammed into him at high speed, dragging him under the wheels and neatly crushing him beneath its chassis.

And the last thing Lieutenant Waltramm heard, before he lost consciousness for the last time in his entire life, was a muffled remark of "Did I just hit something?"

* * *

" **Well** _ **that**_ **didn't go well, did it?"**

"Bill-"

" **Shut up, Polonius. You've still got a few artefacts on hand, right?"**

"A few, y-yes."

" **Then get me one of the telepathy amulets. I think it's time we baited the hook for this little fishy…"**

* * *

Two extremely crowded hours later, Dipper, Mabel and Grunkle Ford sat slumped against the now-parked golf-cart in a deserted corner of the forest, slowly getting their breath back.

By now, the chaos in the distance was gradually winding down: with the last of the command centre having finally collapsed into flaming wreckage, Blubs and Durland were happily trundling away to the rendezvous point, while the Gnomes were busily mopping up the remains of the FIA's tank fleet. Judging by the screams, General Schmebulock was in the mood to take prisoners this time around, and if that smell wafting over the forest was any evidence, his army was preparing for a victory banquet.

"Sheesh," Mabel grumbled. "You'd think the Schmebulock family would have gotten over that joke by now."

Dipper blinked. " _What_ joke?"

"In the Mystery Shack, during Weirdmageddon? That crack Grunkle Stan made about eating the Gnomes once we ran out of food? Well, it turns out they took it… personally. I mean, _really_ personally. We didn't even realize just how pissed-off they were until after the first three or four hikers had disappeared. "

"And the hell of it is, Gnomes don't even _like_ the taste of human flesh," Ford chimed in. "These days, they do it out of spite."

 _Ah, brilliant. Another cute little fact to add to the long list of things that I medically need to forget but can't_ because we destroyed the memory gun. _We. Are. Idiots._

"On that cheerful note," said Dipper out loud, "I think it's time we talked about your big plan, Ford."

"Can we just-"

"No."

"Look, just give me a minute to check a few variables-"

" _No,"_ said Mabel sternly. "You've been stalling long enough, Ford. It's time to finally spill the beans on your big idea for getting rid of Bill. I mean, the artefacts we got out of that vault don't make any sense in the slightest…" She reached into the sack of talismans gathered from the command centre, and held out a handful of glittering arcane knick-knacks. "Containment charms, vessels of true concentration, Weirdness Wands, gateway medallions… and then there's all this weird electronic junk you had us scrape together. What are we supposed to be doing with all this?"

Ford took a deep breath. "We're going to be building a portal."

"…I'm sorry, what?

"We're going to be building a portal," Ford repeated.

"As in… an _interdimensional_ portal?"

"Exactly that."

"As in the kind of portal that let Bill enter our world in the first place? The one you specifically dismantled because it was too dangerous to leave in one piece?"

"Yes, and yes. You see why we need to return to Mystery Shack to make it work, right? I admit, this one's a rather improvised upgrade, but it'll work more or less the same way. You see, because we don't have all the rare materials that would have made it work the last time, I've had to substitute with magical artefacts of sufficient power. I suppose we should credit the FIA for hoarding all this stuff in the first place, and Polonius Northwest for providing them with it; without their help, none of this would have been possible."

Mabel slowly massaged her temples in exasperation. "How is a new portal supposed to get rid of Bill?"

"Easy: reverse the flow and change the destination."

"You mean-"

"In a word, yes. Through my original portal, Bill was able to create a rift between our world and the Nightmare Realm, but via a stable bridgehead that could only travel in one direction. That way, Weirdness could only pour _into_ our dimension. However, if I can reverse the process, I might be able to send Bill to him on a one-way journey to another reality, one that could dissipate the energies of his being and destroy him permanently – along with anything sharing his power. All we'd need to do would be to get his host bodies close enough to the portal, and the gravitational pull of its activation would be enough to drag them in. And that would be that."

"That… might actually work," Mabel conceded. "But just one question: how are we supposed to get all the zombie Northwests to gather around your new and improved portal without making it a _really_ obvious trap?"

"By herding: we wipe out the majority via conventional means until we've whittled them down to manageable numbers, then herd the rest into the trap. The statue would go last, being the easiest to move."

"But what about me?" Dipper protested. "Aren't _I_ one of Bill's host bodies?"

"Not once we get you back to the Mystery Shack," said Ford, confidently. "By now, I have everything I need to remove Bill's corruption from your mind: one injection, and he'll never be able to influence you again."

"That still doesn't explain what we're going to be doing _after_ this is all over."

Ford shrugged. "We go back to our lives. We rebuild. We find happiness on our own. It might not look like much, but there's still a certain degree of comfort and safety here in Gravity Falls – or there _will_ be once we've patched up the breach in our defences and hidden the town again." Noticing the dubious look on Dipper's face, he added, "And if that doesn't appeal, there's always the Great Axolotl."

"The _what?"_

"Nothing. Look, just trust me when I say that when I give you the serum, Bill will no longer be a passenger in your brain."

"So you say," said Mabel. "Trouble is, Bill and Polonius aren't going to sit still for this."

"I imagine they wouldn't."

"Even with his powers in pieces, Bill still has a lot of eyes on hand, and if he ever learned that you were trying to evict that piece of him from Dipper's brain, he'd probably attack us with every single body he has."

"That definitely sounds like him."

"Oh, would you stop being coy with me and just be honest? Are you or are you not planning on using Dipper as bait for Bill's other bodies?"

Ford thought for a moment. "Well," he said at last, "We'd have to get to the Mystery Shack first before we did anything like that, and we'd have to fight our way through all the zombies guarding it first. If Bill had any bodies after that… well, maybe."

"Perfect! I feel _so_ much better!"

"I said 'maybe,' didn't I? I mean, if Bill was desperate enough to attack in a form composed of all his accumulated evidence, we might be use that as our big opportunity to open the portal… but it'd require a great deal of careful timing."

"Not really our strong suit," Mabel added sarcastically. "Okay, Ford, I admit that there's a germ of a good idea here… but you and I need to seriously hash out the strategy on how we're actually going to get as far as the Mystery Shack – and what happens after. First of all, we only use bait as the very absolute last resort…"

As the argument skidded on in the background, Dipper slowly crept away from the side of golf cart and stood up to stretch his legs… but somewhere along the line, he started walking; he didn't know where he was going – in fact, he was pretty sure that he was just circling the area – but frankly, he didn't care. After everything that had happened to him in the last few days, he desperately needed some time to himself; his stay in the bunker had worked some of the troubles out of his mind, but for every minute he spent in this mad future, they only seemed to multiply a thousandfold.

Somehow, the three of them were on the verge of stopping Bill once and for all, and yet Dipper couldn't find it in his heart to feel excited about it.

Gone was the insanely optimistic spirit that had propelled him and Mabel against Bill all those decades: in its place was exhaustion, desperation, and a growing sense of apathy. Part of it was simple burnout, but more than that, it seemed as though there was nothing to look forward to once Bill was dead. Back then, he'd had a return to normality to look forward to, a home and family to return to, a future; now, all he had was a grim, isolated nightmare dragging on for all eternity – and likely spent in permanent isolation.

And right now, his sister and his great uncle were candidly discussing the prospect of using him as bait.

He would return to them in a minute or an hour or however long it took for him to pull himself out of this growing depression; he _would_ return to them… but now, he needed to be alone, away from this miserable alienating reality.

He needed to be out in the forest, where he could pretend that nothing had changed and that if he turned around, Gravity Falls would be back in one piece – and that Mable and Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford and Soos and Wendy would be waiting for him when he arrived back at the mystery shack.

He needed a break.

So, making sure to keep the golf cart within view at all times, he adjusted his course slightly, and wandered off.

* * *

" **Well now,"** said Bill with a smirk. **"That certainly makes the situation a lot simpler, doesn't it? Risky plans, terrifying uncertainty, and a whole lot of confusion on hand. Ol' Pine Tree's already on-edge. All he needs right now is a teensy tiny push…"**

* * *

 _Dipper…_

He blinked. Had he just heard something, or was it just his imagination?

 _Dipper… listen to me._

There it was again: a voice, echoing across the periphery of his senses, not so much a sound as an impulse rippling along his brain. After all the sci-fi novels and paranormal magazines he'd read, it didn't take long for him to recognize that this could only be telepathy. All things considered, finding a telepath in Gravity Falls wasn't so surprising given all the weird and wonderful things he and Mabel had encountered over the summer, but who or what could be contacting him?

 _Don't be afraid, Dipper,_ said the insistent voice in the back of his mind. _I'm here to help you._

"Really?" he whispered back. "Who are you, then?"

 _An old friend._

"I don't recognize your voice… if I can call it that."

 _It's only because you haven't heard how much it's changed since we last met… and because I haven't used it in so long. You and I have a lot in common: I know exactly what it feels like to wake up to a world that doesn't make sense anymore. I've been locked away for so long, just like you, imprisoned in mind and body, cut off from the world in every way that mattered. But now I'm free, and I'm here to help._

"Fair enough, but I really hope you don't mind if I don't take everything you said at face value. I mean, it's not that I don't trust you… it's just that the last few days _really_ haven't done much to fill me with confidence in the goodwill of strangers, you know, what with just about everyone on the planet being out to get me."

 _I know, I know,_ said the voice, now soft and soothing. _Back when I was still visiting Gravity Falls, I could tell you were going to be miserable when you woke up. I mean, what kind of a world is this to grow up in, much less live in?_

Dipper's eyes narrowed. "Who are you?"

 _Someone who knows and loves you, Dipper._

"I-"

A shiver of energy rippled down Dipper's spine like an electric shock, silencing him before he could even finish his sentence. But it was more than just a physical sensation: somehow, he knew that whoever was whispering into his mind was transmitting emotional output alongside the message, sending him tiny parcels of _feeling_ for every word spoken – but he couldn't quite work out what these emotions were just yet.

 _Someone who wishes you could have been spared all this horror._

Again, that inexplicable electric feeling sparked and crackled against his skin, and this time, he knew exactly what emotions he was meant to feel: familiarity, comfort, sympathy, affection, friendship – each one as real and tangible as a hand on his shoulder.

 _This future holds nothing but nightmares for you, doesn't it? After all the hope and potential you saw on the horizon, you've awoken to a world where you've been isolated from everything you knew: from your home, your family, your friends, from the world you once knew, even the bright future you had ahead of you after Weirdmageddon. You're isolated from the entire human race now, and why not? They all want you dissected just so they don't have to suffer a few wrinkles. You don't even feel connected to Ford and Mabel anymore, do you? How could you, when they've changed so much since you last saw them? They frighten you now, and they confuse you beyond all reason. Mabel's turned into a kill-crazy berserker who'll do anything to stop the enemy, and Ford's a walking dead man held together by tech; they've both done things you can't even dream of doing, and they did it all for you. Yes, it's a very special kind of isolation when you can feel alone in the company of those you love the most…_

"How do you know all this?"

 _You and I used to be close, Dipper. For a time, you hoped we might be more than friends… and that's why everything that's happened to you in the last few decades has hurt me worse than anything that the prison guards could ever dream of. Knowing you were going through that same loop, over and over again… And now that I'm awake, I've done my research: I've learned everything that's happened to you while I was locked away, and it just breaks my heart._

A single image flickered into Dipper's mind, a vision of a girl he'd known once upon a time, a tall, strident figure with flowing red hair as bright as autumn leaves and a strength that could flatten any opposition stupid enough to challenge her. She was older than he remembered, a grown woman now instead of a teenager, but there was no mistaking those crimson locks.

"Wendy?!" he whispered, heart hammering.

 _I've missed you too, Dipper. It's been a long forty years._

Somewhere in the back of his head, alarm bells were ringing insistently for attention, and a little voice was trying desperately to inform him that this was simply too good to be true, but for once, Dipper wasn't interested in listening. That _electric_ sensation rippling up his spine and across his brain seemed to silence all objections.

"But how… how are you even speaking to me? Mabel and Ford told me you were in prison, that you were comatose!"

 _I was. Believe me, I was just about braindead after that failed breakout. While I was locked up in the infirmary, though, the warden had me rented out to the prison quacks for just about any kind of experiment they liked: gravity enhancement, radical gene therapy, induced organ failure, dream manipulation, magical artefacts, skin-swapping, telomere regeneration, exposure to pure Weirdness – you name it, they tried it. As long as I couldn't complain, they didn't have to worry about anyone asking questions about all the drugs they were pumping into my veins. Then, last month, some doctor comes along with a blood sample they'd managed to steal from Ford's archives._

"You mean-"

 _Yes. Once they were certain it was yours, they wanted to see if all those quirks of biology could be replicated. And eventually, they realized I was the best possible subject: after all, who'd miss me if the test went wrong? But it worked: within a week, I was back in my thirties again. What they didn't anticipate was the way my mind recovered as well; a couple of days ago, I woke up. Security was lax in my end of the prison, so it didn't take much effort to break out. And now here I am, speaking to you courtesy of one of the FIA's magic artefacts._

"You mean you're _in Gravity Falls?_ How did you get here?"

 _I hitched a lift: everyone on the lookout for me was expecting a little old lady on a walker with about a million bone fractures; they weren't expecting someone agile enough to smuggle themselves aboard a helicopter._

"That's _great!_ I've got to tell Mabel and-"

 _Ah-ah-ah… before you go celebrating or telling anyone, I have to tell you this: we need to meet up as soon as possible. Mabel and Ford are making a very serious mistake. I've been listening in on communications between this Polonius guy and his FIA pals, and it turns out Bill's been anticipating Ford's next move: there's an ambush planned at the Shack. I don't know how but Bill knows exactly what you're planning next. We have to meet, ASAP._

Somewhere in Dipper's mind, a tiny note of objection managed to cut through the soothing electric current buzzing across his nerves. "But what about Mabel and Ford?" he asked. "Shouldn't they know about this as well?"

 _Not Ford. I don't know how he's doing it, but whatever Ford says or does, Bill knows about it right away. I mean, how do you think these FIA goons knew where to attack? You can't let Ford know about this, and since they're partners in crime, you can't let Mabel know it either._

Dipper's brow wrinkled. "So how is running off in secret any less dangerous?"

 _Point taken… but there's one plus: if anyone comes after you, it'll be Mabel, and we'll have a chance to explain things to her without Ford knowing about it._

"That makes sense, I guess. But where can we meet? Even with these agency guys out of the way, Gravity Falls isn't exactly safe at this time of night."

 _Easy. Remember the old water tower – the one that Robbie used to graffiti muffins on, back in the day? It's still standing. Meet me there, and we'll work out a strategy that'll knock Bill dead…_

A moment later, the telepathic link abruptly cut off; immediately, Dipper found himself alone in the cold night air, shivering pathetically as reality set back in and the comforting psychic buzz faded away. He knew at once that he should leave for the water tower right away; he had to see Wendy again, he had to know what she'd planned _…_ but at the same time, he knew that everything he'd just heard from Wendy sounded too good to be true, and that the safest course of action would be to tell Mabel before he did anything stupid.

For the longest time, he could only stand there, struggling to make up his mind. By now, he knew that this world was pretty much out to get him and would only make him suffer if he let his guard down around anyone other than family… and yet he wanted to see Wendy again more than anything else in the world, and all those reassuring pulses of energy on his skin and spine only made the longing ache all the more keenly.

At long last, taking the deepest breath he'd ever taken in all his years of life, he made his decision.

* * *

Bill chuckled to himself as he watched the distant figure of Dipper silently hemming and hawing to himself. There was no mistaking it: Pine Tree was well and truly hooked.

All he had to do now was make his way to the water tower and wait until Dipper came cruising over for a hug and a solution from his boyhood crush… and then the trap would slam shut, and Dipper would be his again. A little surgery, a quick ritual or two, some psychic subjugation, and Bill would finally be able to cast off this ridiculous female carcass in favour of the vessel he'd chosen right from the beginning.

With Dipper's body at his disposal, blessed with eternal life and imbued with all the power a normal human vessel couldn't possibly wield, he would be unstoppable. Given time and a few more dead Northwests, he'd be even more powerful. Here in Gravity Falls, he'd be shielded from inevitable race to commoditize the immortality derived from Dipper's blood DNA; and when war finally broke out and the squabbling powers of Earth tore the planet to pieces in their pursuit of eternity, Bill would be perfectly placed to seize control once the fallout settled.

Soon, the world and all its cowering inhabitants would belong to him.

Soon, he would have his revenge.

* * *

A/N: Any speculation on what'll happen next, ladies and gents?


	12. Lazarus

A/N: Aaaand, the second last chapter! We are on the home stretch now, folks, and it's time to start unveiling secrets and triggering Chekhov's gun!

Read, review, and above all, enjoy!

* * *

 _Soon… soon he'll be here. Soon he'll be mine, and once he's mine, the Earth will follow. Just a few minutes more…_

Looking down from the decaying remains of the water tower, Bill Cipher could barely keep his laughter from spilling outwards. As much as he'd have loved to indulge in some highly-therapeutic maniacal cackling, he didn't want to alert Pine Tree when he finally arrived at the tower; he didn't want to spook the prey before the trap shut. Besides, his laughter sounded all wrong when produced by Wendy's Corduroy's stolen vocal cords, and in the piecemeal state of his spirit, he didn't have quite the same chaotic giggle as he'd once had. For now, he'd wait… until at last he was whole and safely contained within an immortal vessel. Then, he could let the glorious noise of triumphant mirth ring out across the length and breadth of this podunk town.

Soon he would be his old self again, happy, mischievous and mad as the night was dark. No more whispering in the minds of his worshippers, no more humourlessly grumbling through the lips of a vessel not meant to house his greatness. No, in the body of Dipper Pines, his voice would sound clearer and more like his own than it had in decades.

All he had to do was wait just a little longer…

By now, the Mystery Shack and what little remained of its grounds were illuminated by the haunting blue light of eldritch energies being gathered and condensed into their purest, most potent form. Around the petrified remains of Bill's old body, the dead Northwests were hard at work, chanting the words of nightmarish rituals long forgotten by human civilization: through the blood sacrifice of several gnomes and at least one of the inbred scavengers unfortunate enough to still inhabit the ruins of Gravity Falls, the zombies were slowly calling forth the dormant portion of Bill's spirit that was still imprisoned within the statue – closely supervised by Polonius.

By itself, it could do nothing but watch, and without the constant chanting of the zombies, it would be forced to retreat back into the statue, unable to resist the inexorable bonds of the body it had been metaphysically chained to. However, once Pine Tree was secured in their midst, Bill's spirit could be channelled into his body, along with all the fragments of himself contained in the Northwests and the consciousness he now housed in Wendy's decrepit flesh. All would be funnelled into Pine Tree's body, subsuming the kid's own worthless mind and leaving Bill free to take it all for himself: physical form, immortality, the power that his spirit could channel when blessed with his chosen vessel – _all of it._

All of this would happen – all of this was _destined_ to happen – very soon: after all, hadn't he fooled Dipper into following his lure? Hadn't he set the trap, readied the bait and given the prey every reason imaginable not to refuse it?

Oh yes, yes, yes, it would be glorious…

From somewhere below, he heard the sound of cracking twigs and the faint rustle of tree branches being brushed aside.

Scarcely able to keep himself from giggling, he hurried over to the railing just in time to see Dipper skidding to a halt at the foot of the water tower, puffing and panting like a dying steam engine, pockets bulging mysteriously with things that appealed only to him.

 _Just a little closer. Just a tiny bit closer…_

"Wendy? Are you there?"

 _Aaaaaaand he's mine!_

Scuttling down the ladder with all the speed and stealth he could manage, he leapt from the four-last rung and landed beside Dipper with a giddy laugh that he _just_ managed to disguise as a grunt of effort. "You made it!" he said. "Great! Now, come on, Dipper; we've got some serious work to do."

"Yeah," said Dipper. "I guess we do."

Bill's eyes narrowed. Was it just his imagination, or did Pine Tree seem just a tiny bit downbeat about all this? After all, the love of his adolescent life was standing before him in the flesh after decades spent comatose in a prison hospital; after the day he'd had, the little pissant should have been showing this body in slobbery kisses… and yet right now, he barely looked in the mood to concentrate on her.

But at last, a smile gradually inched its way across Dipper's face, and he said, "It's good to see you again, Wendy."

 _Ah, there we go! Guess the little guy was just tuckered out after a long day being everyone's favourite McGuffin._

"Now, you said you might have a plan to stop Bill?"

"That's right! Follow me: I'll explain everything on the way – but not for long. It'll be a short walk."

"Lead the way."

Once again taken aback by Pine Tree's inexplicable nonchalance, Bill nonetheless set off through the forest at a brisk march, making sure to keep the brat within arm's reach at all times. Fortunately, Dipper didn't seem particularly cautious right now, for not only had he steadfastly ignored all opportunities to stray out of grabbing range, but he wasn't even looking in Wendy's direction anymore. Instead, his gaze was fixed on the forest ahead of him, every atom of concentration focussed on that distant just beyond the treeline.

 _Oh, you want it to be and over and done with, do you? That's okay, kid. So do I. You've no idea how long I've been waiting for this little game to be over and done with. You think you were in that isolation cell for a long time? Imagine what it's like being reduced to scattered fragments of essence sealed inside dozens of unlucky vessels across the world: imagine being trapped in a statue and left to dream of escape for forty plus years; imagine finding your consciousness spread across the minds of a couple hundred corpses and a few living mortals for the better part of four decades. Imagine being able to do nothing but whisper to minds that can't even listen, enacting changes that your shitheel great uncle undid just as quickly as I made them! Oooh, you are going to be sorry in ways you can't even imagine, you constellation-headed little freak! You're gonna pay, Pine Tree! You're gonna-_

"You were going to tell me your plan," said Pine Tree.

"Oh, right! Well, I think I've found a gap in Bill's defences down at the Mystery Shack; we can sneak in, steal some stuff from the labs and make weapons. Once we're ready to go, we can take the zombies on all by ourselves; without those zombies around, Bill can't do a thing."

"And then we can bring in Mabel and Grunkle Ford, and they can get Bill's influence out of my head, right?"

"Right, right…"

 _You wish, Pine Tree, you wish. The next time those talking lumps of scar tissue and metal see you again, I'll be a permanent resident of your body._

 _Oh, incidentally, I've got to think about what I'm gonna do to those two when I'm done: I'll have reclaimed all the bits and pieces of essence by then, so I won't have any zombie servants anymore, so I'll have to do it myself. So, I guess I could just borrow some explosives from the lab and make some landmines around the lab: as soon as the duo of dumbasses show up, they'll be blown to flying hamburger meat! Hmmm. Nah, that doesn't give me much to do. Kinda boring when you think about it. I could borrow some guns from the FIA and snipe 'em as soon as I see them. Hmmm, still a bit dull. Maybe I'll lead them into a gnome den, watch all those pointy-headed bastard chowing down on those annoying bastards. Wait, I know! I'll set up a minefield, lead Sixer and Shooting Star in at one end, and lead the gnomes in at the other end. Whoever survives the longest gets SHOT! How's that for a slice of crispy-fried awesome?_

"You alright, Wendy? You seem a little distracted."

"Am I?" said Bill, practically glowing with innocence. "Hadn't noticed. Come on, Dipper: the Mystery Shack's just up ahead. Let's get-"

From somewhere up ahead, the silence of the forest was abruptly shattered by a deafening _bang_ violent enough to shake the ground and send pine needles falling from the treetops.

"…what the hell?" Bill muttered.

Hurrying ahead, he hastily pushed aside the tangled undergrowth and hanging branches, until at last the Mystery Shack crept into view. Immediately, he saw that the reassuring glow of arcane energies that had previously surrounded it was gone, and in its place, a fiery orange light was now cast upon the grounds. A huge patch of the overgrown lawn was ablaze, most of the carpark was in the process of going up in smoke, and the orderly little circle of zombies around his statue was now scattering in all directions, dispersed by a sudden new arrival.

And even from here, Bill could already tell that this new threat was already attacking and destroying the zombie Northwests: he could feel – actually _feel –_ the little pockets of essence that were their bodies being slowly erased, dispersing his energies into nothingness.

 _How is this possible?_ He thought furiously. _Who could possibly be attacking? I didn't detect anything from Sixer's mind, and Shooting Star wouldn't dare attack on her own without discussing a plan of attack together! They're a team! So who could be attacking us? Who could have planned thi-_

"Guess you weren't expecting us to try something different, huh Bill?" said Dipper airily.

Bill very slowly turned, borrowed heart suddenly hammering in shock and disbelief. "You _knew?"_ he demanded.

"No offence, but the trick fell apart once you stopped talking to me. I mean, that telepathic suggestion field wears off really quickly once you hang up, so it was kind of obvious once I had some time to stop and think about it."

"HOW?" Bill shrieked. " _HOW?_ How could it have been obvious?! I don't care if the telepathy wore off, my disguise was perfect! I deserve an Emmy for the performance I put on – no, an _Oscar!_ How could you have suspected anything from me, from this body? You should have been under my thumb from the start! How did you know? How did you cheat me?!"

Pine Tree smirked. "This isn't the first time someone's tried to use Wendy as bait, Bill," he said, ever-so-slightly smug. "I mean, first there was the Shapeshifter playing possum down in the bunker, then there was your Prison Bubble trying to trick me into staying. Believe me, once you've seen your crush turn into cockroaches and go crawling all over your shoes, you've run out of excuses for falling for the same trick. So, I went straight to Mabel and we hashed out a plan – without telling Grunkle Ford this time."

"But… you love this body! You've wanted her ever since you set eyes on her! You've trusted her more than you've trusted the future versions of your own sister and great-uncle! How could you have resisted that? How could you have sided with your creepy big sister over _this?!"_

"Because you're not Wendy," said Dipper icily. "Without the telepathy, you're not even good at pretending to be her. You're nothing like her: you're just a parasite clowning around in the body of a coma patient. Yes, you've dolled her up and made her look just like she did back in 2012, but that's all you've got – her body… and if you think that's all you'd need to pretend to be Wendy Corduroy, you're an even bigger idiot than I thought you were.

"I don't understand."

"Of course you don't. And that's the difference between us: we've both been stuck the way we are for the last forty years, but you know what? _I_ grew up. You haven't."

This time, Bill couldn't even speak. He could only seethe in rage, quivering with unexpressed hatred as the roar of explosions and the faint groans of dying zombies rippled over him.

"Also, I hate to say it, but the Shapeshifter did a much better job of using Wendy's form as bait than you ever could."

Howling in rage, Bill lunged at Dipper; he didn't care that the process of claiming his body would be _insanely_ difficult without the ritual help of the zombies, he didn't care that he would be losing out on all the additional fragments of his spirit by claiming the vessel now, and he definitely didn't care about all the time he'd waste slowly regenerating his power without those soul fragments. In that moment, he didn't give a damn. All that mattered was getting his hands on Dipper, consequences be damned.

And in that moment, Dipper reached into one of his mysteriously-bulging pockets and held out a taser.

Bill had just enough time to recognize his own mistake – before the electrodes slammed home. Nerves suddenly alight with electricity, lightning coursing across his borrowed muscles, he jitterbugged wildly on the spot for a second, and then crashed helplessly to the ground like a felled tree.

And as he lay there in a puddle of indignity, Bill dimly heard a sarcastic voice from overhead saying, "What's wrong, Bill? I thought pain was hilarious."

It took him almost two minutes of agonizing pain to haul himself upright, and by then, he wasn't even interested in claiming his vessel unscathed anymore. He didn't care if he'd only be hurting himself in the long run: as soon as he caught up with the little shit, he was going to break one of Pine Tree's noodly little arms and take his time doing it. It'd heal eventually, once he was in control, and he'd enjoy every minute of healing process – because it would be a sign of victory.

 _I'll give you pain, you brat. I'll show you what's hilarious. I'll be laughing for every second I spend digesting your puny little mind, every second you spend watching me chew bits off your psyche and spit them into oblivion. You are going to watch as I make your body my own, and it is going to be goddamn BIBLICAL!_

Snarling, he clawed his way to his feet… and suddenly realized that Dipper was long gone. However, he wasn't alone in the forest.

"Oh," he muttered.

"Nice to see you again," said Mabel pleasantly.

Bill had just enough time to realize that she was holding one of Wendy's old axes, before it slammed blade-first into his unprotected belly, digging deep into his flesh.

In the end, the only thing that saved his current vessel was sheer luck: at the last moment, Bill had taken a single instinctive step back from the blow. As such, it didn't split him completely open, nor did it puncture his stomach: instead, it simply tore a vicious gash up the length of Wendy's torso on the left side, stopping just below the ribs.

Screaming in pain, Bill roughly yanked himself free of the axe blade, ducked awkwardly under Mabel's next swing, and sprinted into the forest – leaving a trail of faintly-luminous blood in his wake. And every step of the way, all he could hear was Pine Tree's echoing sneer following him through the dark:

 _"What's wrong, Bill? I thought pain was hilarious."_

* * *

Blubs and Durland hadn't expected to be called back into the field so quickly; normally, after battles like these, they were given a quick check-up and hustled back into stasis, but it seemed their work wasn't done yet. Not that they were complaining: after all, they got so few opportunities to have a chat and see the sights, they were happy for just about any excuse to keep them out of the toybox for a while – even if it was shaving precious time off their limited lifespan.

So, the moment they got the call from Mabel, they'd marched briskly off to the rendezvous point just beyond the reach of the Mystery Shack; though a little bit taken aback by the fact that Ford wouldn't be taking part in this little raid, Blubs and Durland were more than happy to take orders exclusively from her this time around.

As such, it was with much solemnity that they'd accepted Mabel's weapon of choice for the mission at hand, freshly-borrowed from the emergency stash at the ruins of the Valentino funeral home: Stanford Pines' prototype sonic tri-frequency cannon, affectionately known as the Barbershop Gun.

Also, a large supply of sonic grenades based on the same principle.

The two of them been told all about the weaknesses of zombies, so as they began their approach, they used their secondary weapons only to stir up the defenders – setting the lawn alight, dousing the parking lot in liquid napalm, stuff like that. Then, once the zombies entered firing range, Blubs and Durland let rip with the sonic cannon: one by one, the Northwests began to succumb to the devastating three-part harmony echoing across the grounds, their heads bursting open like dropped watermelons.

Eventually, though, the others soon realized the danger; before long, the zombies were beginning to retreat out of earshot. Worse still, several of them were beginning to make use of the magic they'd been imbued with, conjuring up spheres of searing energy and launching them across the grounds towards him. Granted, most of them couldn't aim worth a damn, and the few attacks that connected only fizzled harmlessly against Blubs and Durland's body armour, but there were still a lot of attackers out there: if the two of them were going to continue attacking, they'd have to get closer – and that would mean walking right into the firing line, in range of enough blasts to puncture their armour.

As one, they glanced over to the distant figure of Mabel, who was still advancing on the Mystery Shack via the now-unprotected left flank, bloody axe still in hand and Dipper by her side.

"I think it's time you brought out your _other_ secret weapon," said Blubs, via the radio.

"Agreed," came the reply. "I think I'm close enough to get a clear signal to the lab, so… releasing the Lazarus subject in three… two… one…"

* * *

Gideon Gleeful hadn't died pleasantly.

In many ways, he was still dying.

Both Mabel and Ford had warned him time and again of the dangers inherent in continuing his magical experiments without the proper safeguards, but Gideon had always been too reckless for his own good: he wanted to master the arcane arts on his own, without the safety net that Ford's fully-warded laboratories could provide. Ford had offered to modify Gideon's own fortified home in LA to that end, if only to spare the neighbours from explosive miscasts; of course, the ambitious young mage had turned him down. Pacifica had offered to buy him a much more sophisticated research facility somewhere deep under the Mojave desert, one that could protect him from FIA snooping _and_ prevent collateral damage, but he'd declined that as well. It wasn't enough for him to succeed at wizardry: he wanted to remain in the spotlight while doing so, to let the world know that magic was real and that he had mastered it.

Mabel knew she could have talked Gideon out of this idea. Even though Gideon had finally moved on from his childhood infatuation with her, he still valued her approval; with a little time and effort, she could have talked him into accepting a safer deal. But in the end, Mabel had decided against it: at the time, her bitterness against the world and its hypocrisy had picked up a desperate edge, and she'd hoped that if Gideon succeeded at revealing magic to the world, it might be enough for all the _other_ secrets to be revealed. Maybe, if people started listening to Gideon, they might listen to him when he told them about Bill and what had happened to Dipper – and from there, the tide might finally turn in _their_ favour.

Of course, it hadn't worked out that way.

Poor old Gideon had always leaped before he looked, always rushed ahead without thinking. Perhaps that was why he'd remained friends with Ford and Mabel even after everything he'd done when he was a kid: they both knew what it was like to rush in where angels feared to tread, as the saying went. In many ways, they were part of the same recovery group, except Gideon hadn't been all that good at recovering _or_ learning from his mistakes.

At that point, he was still publically known as a psychic, occultist and all-round bigmouth, still making hundreds of thousands of dollars every month on sold-out tours of the local theatre circuit – millions flocking to his lectures on the power of thaumatugy, either out of credulity or simply for the entertainment factor of watching Gideon's madness up close. But he never once claimed to wield true magic… up until he thought he could. As soon he'd gotten the hang of the showiest and most spectacular forms of magic he could learn from the spellbooks in his possession, he began making grandiose claims to the media about the powers he wielded. He showed off at a distance for a while, summon up freak storms, bending all the streetlights on a particular avenue in knots, conjuring illusions from one end of Los Angeles to the next.

And when the news outlets dismissed these acts as coincidence, Gideon took to the stage and demonstrated his powers before an audience of thousands, complete with a panel of professional debunkers. There would be no doubt of magic's reality this time, he proclaimed. By all appearances, the demonstration actually went quite well at first: objects and audience members were levitated, candles were ignited, instantaneous teleportation was achieved, and even the professional sceptics were completely stumped.

Then Gideon decided to manipulate time, just to put the capstone on his performance – and that was when it all went horribly wrong: having only practiced this school of magic briefly, he'd gravely underestimated just how difficult temporal control was, and his attempts to get his mouth wrapped around the complicated Enochian syllables only resulted in him badly flubbing the pronunciation. As a result, a magical chain reaction was triggered on stage, and a wave of pure entropy was sent rippling through the theatre.

Right then and there, the cameras were rolling and every social media fiend in the audience had their phone in hand, so every second of what happened next was documented in hideous, excruciating detail: in the face of the entropy wave, scaffolding collapsed, curtains caught fire, wiring short-circuited, the footlights exploded, the stage caught fire, and for a moment it looked as if the ceiling was above to cave in. In desperation, Gideon tried to rewind time, and when that failed, tried to stop it altogether just long enough to evacuate the theatre – only to end up turning the entropy wave on himself; this time, the chain reaction went wild, and in once visceral instant, the energies of the spell blew the amateur mage to pieces.

RIP Gideon Gleeful, age 35.

Of course, none of the cameras had been there to see how Mabel stole Gideon's charred remains from the morgue before the FIA could get there, and none of the audience ever knew the terrible power inherent in those ghastly relics.

The time spells Gideon had cast had been fused with his pulverised body, not enough to truly bring him back from death, but just enough to preserve a ghostly impression of himself on the time-space continuum like a fly in amber. From then on, Gideon was forever cycling between life and death, returning to life for a minute or so and then dying in a gory explosion, before reappearing whole and none the worse for wear. Worse still, the impression was fully conscious, had even communicated with Mabel in between deaths; as such, Gideon was now fully aware that not even the destruction of his mortal remains could put him down for good.

As such, the only humane thing to do was to put him in temporal stasis, where the spells that continuously reincarnated him would not function.

And there he remained for several years, until Ford and Mabel belatedly realized that Gideon's condition, combined with his impressive magical skills, made him very useful as a last resort weapon. It had taken a lot of effort – not to mention several deaths – before Gideon could be talked into it, but eventually he agreed: as long as he was allowed to remain in stasis between uses, he would put up with just about anything, including being pointed in the general direction of the enemy and allowed to take out his frustrations on them.

Thus, the Lazarus Subject.

Though they'd done their best to keep him updated on the events of the world between massacres, Mabel and Ford had done their best not to use his powers too frivolously: after all, there was no telling if the spells that preserved him might one day degrade, or if Gideon might degenerate into insanity after repeated uses. So, they kept him in reserve, leaving him aside for only the direst emergencies – emergencies that might beggar the power of even Blubs and Durland.

Emergencies like today.

* * *

Polonius wasn't surprised that someone had tried to attack the ritual site; after the last couple of gnome incursions, they were almost expected and easily tolerated, given that a few decent magical incantations were enough to ward them off. Even the realization that there was actually something that could still play a three-part harmony out there even with every functioning radio in town destroyed wasn't much of a setback: as long as the Northwests stayed out of range of the lethal sound, they were safe.

And then _he_ appeared.

At first, he was nothing more than a transparent, flickering image, ephemeral and insubstantial. But as he stepped into the blazing light of the brushfires, he seemed to gain definition, rapidly taking on the form of a short, slightly chubby figure in the tattered remains of a stage magician's tuxedo; pale, wide-eyed, his stark-white hair sculpted into a magnificent pompadour, he was easily the most flamboyant figure in all of Gravity Falls that event. More than that, though: this could only be Gideon Gleeful, one-time ally of Bill turned traitor, victim of his own clumsy experimentation.

And somehow, alive again.

"Aw, did anyone miss Li'l Ol' me?" Gideon cackled. His bloodshot eyes flicked to the limbless figure chained to the left of Polonius. "Oh hey, Pacifica!" he said. "Nice to see you again! How's death?"

"A lot more boring than you'd think," said Pacifica, smiling in spite of herself.

"No arguments there."

Then, he exploded, showering the Mystery Shack with ephemeral gore.

A second later, he reappeared – and this time, he wasn't in the mood for any further introductions there.

The first spell blasted the nearest rank of Northwests across the ground; the second sliced through another row of dead relatives like a hot knife through butter, severing limbs and bisecting bodies at the waistline; a third tore through the chain collaring Pacifica, and the forth wrenched the signpost free of her body. True, she was still missing all four limbs and was of so little threat concern to the gathered Northwests that she was barely worth mentioning, but her ally was still advancing on her – and they could not afford to give the enemy the kind of tactical information that Pacifica wielded.

"About turn!" Polonius screamed, as Gideon continued bombarding them with magic. "We're under attack from the rear!"

His words were drowned out by an explosion and the sound of scattered Northwests being shattered into dust.

Too late, he realized that the two-headed monster was still advancing on them, and was now flinging grenades into the mix – and with Gideon's magical powers, he could easily draw them towards priority targets. Survival instincts overriding his self-inflicted conditioning, Polonius took to his heels, hoping that he might be able to gain the advantage if he could reach higher ground…

Only for Pacifica, now wriggling about on the ground like the maggot she was, to trip him up; foot catching on his own mother's ribcage, his legs buckled, sending him toppling to the ground – right in the path of the next grenade. And with Pacifica now clumsily pinning his legs down, there was no way he'd ever get up in time to escape it.

Polonius Augustus Northwest, last and greatest of his lineage, could only stare in disbelief at the as the grenade arced through the air towards them, and wonder how everything could have possibly gone so horribly wrong. He wanted to say something profound in his final moments, to scream his defiance, to sneer that Bill Cipher would somehow prevail. But fear had taken the last of his conditioning with it, and left him every bit as weak and pathetic as he had been before Bill had guided him to glory: he was no longer Bill's chosen emissary, replicating his personality in every word and deed; he was just a human mind clinging to a reanimated corpse, and he was terrified beyond all measure.

So, all he could say was "I don't wanna die, mom."

There was a muffled clatter as the grenade landed right in front of them, and in that terrible silence just before it erupted, Pacifica smiled at him, almost reassuring in her final moments. "No-one really does, son," she whispered. "Close your eyes, now. It's time to sleep."

And then the sonic grenade erupted, sending a perfect three-part harmony roaring across the battlefield, scattering the minds of both Polonius and Pacifica to the four winds.

* * *

Somewhere in the depths of the forest, Bill leaned against the tree and struggled to bind the wound in his belly. It was no easy task, even by sacrificing a few morsels of his power: after all this flesh had already been extensively repaired, and there was only so much forcible regeneration it could undergo without developing some kind of hideous mutation.

Not that going full-blown mutant wouldn't be such a bad idea as a last resort, but that wasn't such a good idea right now, when he was still trying to rely on stealth.

For now, the situation was pretty dire: the Northwests were dead for good this time, the Mystery Shack had been claimed by the Pines Family, and with the FIA forces depleted, nobody was left to follow his orders. That left him stranded in the middle of nowhere, trying to bandage himself with strips of his own clothing like some pitiful mortal.

But all wasn't lost _just_ yet. He still had one trump card left in the deck.

Sixer was going to be _very_ surprised…

* * *

A/N: Up next: THE FINALE. Feel free to supply your theories and speculations!


	13. Nightmare's End

A/N: And here's the end, ladies and gents! I hope all of you have enjoyed the ride so far, and I hope I've managed to bring this story to a satisfying conclusion.

Without further ado, the finale: read, review, and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Gravity Falls is not mine.

* * *

"You could have _told_ me you were planning on doing this. Seriously, taking on an army of zombies with the Sherriff and the Deputy _and_ Gideon in tow? Why didn't you invite me along?"

Scant minutes had passed since the final battle: by now, the remains of Polonius and his zombie family had been gathered into a funeral pyre and burnt, and their decomposing remains were already beginning to disintegrate into foul-smelling ashes. In the absence of opponents, Blubs and Durland were currently patrolling the grounds just in case any gnomes or FIA stragglers showed up, while Gideon had gone back into stasis for the time being, leaving the crated remains of the Mystery Shack's lawn officially dominated by the lumbering shapes of automated assembler/fabricator machines. Unearthly centipede-like shapes that constantly reconfigured themselves to fit the terrain, they had been originally been built to help Ford transport consignments of hazardous materials from one safehouse to another over the course of the last few years. Now they were being used to ferry the large quantity of raw materials that would be used to build the portal: steel girders, wiring, cable, volatile chemicals, and of course the magical artefacts that would be needed to open and sustain the wormhole.

At the centre of the chaos, Dipper and Mabel stood, covered in mud, blood and god only knew what else, but looking almost impossibly exhilarated in spite of it; if anything, this only left Grunkle Ford even more disgruntled at having missed all the fun.

"Believe me," chuckled Mabel, "It wasn't personal."

"You'll pardon me if I don't believe you. I mean, Bill Cipher getting tasered _and_ axed in the chest? I would have had popcorn on hand! Christ almighty, I would have baked a cake!"

"Look, it's just bad luck on our part. Dipper had a bright idea and we didn't have time to drag you into it, what with you being busy with the automated assemblers. Speaking of which, how's it going?"

"Swimmingly," grumbled Ford. "The machines are all working perfectly to specifications, the artefacts are in position and ready to begin channelling energy, and the raw materials have all been loaded. All we need to do now is to get these assemblers into the Shack basement alongside Bill's original body and let them piece our ersatz portal together. Once that's over and done with, we activate the portal, fling the statue into the dimensional abyss and call it a night."

"In other words, we're ending it right where it started," said Dipper grimly.

"We can but hope. I'll have to give that my full attention, unfortunately: someone's got to be standing guard just in case Bill has any surprises left for us, or if the assemblers hit any technical errors. Do you think you're up to administering the serum, Mabel?"

"I can do that easily, yeah. You gonna be okay in the basement by yourself?"

Ford offered a bemused smile. "You seriously think I'd have _trouble_ with this sort of thing by now? By now, I've had so much experience with portals that I might as well put this thing together in my sleep, not to toot my own horn or anything like that. And if it's security you're concerned about, we've still got our little duo of defenders out there: even if Bill's current body doesn't bleed to death, I very much doubt he'll be able to get past _them_."

"All the same, I'd still prefer it if we could keep an eye on things: I'd rather if we didn't have to split up now, not when we're so close to finishing the job. In my experience, that's when Murphy's Law _really_ sets in."

"Relax: there's security cameras in the basement just in case something goes wrong, and I'm sure I have a monitor set up in the operating theatre. If you want to keep an eye on me, all you've got to do is switch on the monitor and tune in. Simple as that."

Mabel shook her head disapprovingly. "I still don't think this is a good idea," she sighed.

"Maybe not, but it's gotta be done."

"…excuse me?"

"Division of labour," said Ford quickly. "You patch Dipper up and scrub the last bits of Bill's influence out of his brain, and I keep an eye on the assembly. And hey," he added, "You get a chance to chat with Dipper here about what we're going to do next once this is all over with. Win-win in other words."

There was a muffled beeping from Ford's watch. "Ah damn," he muttered. "Looks like we've picked up a slight hitch downstairs. I'd best go attend to that. You're okay to look after Dipper, right? I'll see you downstairs once you're finished – best of luck to both of you!"

And with that, he was gone, clattering into the depths of the Mystery Shack and into the basement laboratory with the remaining assemblers following close behind.

In the awkward silence that followed, Dipper looked up at Mabel and asked, "He's hiding something, isn't he?"

"That was pretty obvious from the moment he started asking us to split up."

"Do you think Bill was telling the truth when he contacted me as Wendy? I mean, do you think he actually has some kind of connection to Ford's mind?"

Mabel thought for a moment, humming tunelessly as she mulled over the problem. "Hard to say," she concluded. "Maybe it's true, or maybe it's just Bill trying to drive a wedge between us. The former might explain how Polonius and these FIA bastards were able to counter our defences so quickly when they first got here, plus how Bill was able to work out our plan for the portal. I don't think it means anything either way: I mean, even if he can listen in on Ford's thoughts, that's all he can do. He can't take control of him, he can't manipulate him, and he definitely can't turn him against us."

"How can you tell?"

"Because if he could have done any of that, I'd be dead and you'd be spending the rest of eternity as Bill's fingerpuppet. He wouldn't have had to bother with any of this FIA assault team crap; he'd have just had Ford walk you out of the house and let the zombies do the rest."

"Oh."

"Assuming any of the stuff he told you was the truth, he likely can't do anything with it: even if he hasn't bled to death, he's got no resources left – no soldiers, no zombies, no magical artefacts, no way of deactivating the perimeter sentry guns, and _definitely_ no means of outfighting Blubs and Durland. All he's got is his own body, and stealth. Hopefully, he'll get caught trying to break into the Shack and that'll be the end of him… but then again, it's never as simple as that. Now, let's get down to the operating theatre: I don't know about you, but after all the trouble that thing's caused us over the last few decades, I'm ready to get the last of Bill's mark out of your head."

"You're still planning on using the security monitor, right?"

"Oh hell yes. I didn't get this far in life by not taking precautions."

* * *

By the time he'd finally made it back to the Mystery Shack, Bill had almost run out obscenities.

He'd bound the partially-healed wound in his belly with strips torn from Wendy's clothing, found a halfway-suitable combat knife buried in the detritus of the battlefield, and he'd somehow managed to get as far as the back yard without managing to trigger any of the perimeter sentry guns or bumping into the conjoined blubbermountain patrolling the grounds, but so far, he wasn't enjoying much in the way of success.

Right now, success was infuriatingly close at hand – but in all cases, just out of reach: thanks to the extraction team's earlier efforts, there was still a hole in the wall leading directly to the operating theatre, and he could clearly see Shooting Star and Pine Tree through it… but there were now a cluster of sentry guns in the way, and any attempt to attack head-on would probably result in Wendy's body ending up with even more holes than usual. Indeed, that was probably the only reason why the two drips were conducting the work here instead of literally anywhere else in the building – just to bait him into a trap. With no way of safely crossing the threshold, he could only watch as Bloody Murder Mabel set to work on wiping the last trace of Bill's presence out of Dipper's body.

In spite of all the frustration that bubbled in the back of his head at this sight, Bill wasn't discouraged: after all, it wasn't as if he couldn't burn the mark back into Pine Tree's brain with a little time and effort. All he'd need was some alone time with the little bastard. A few quick snips of the unicorn-hair stiches, a little bit of essence applied directly to his skull, and he'd be ripe and ready to be the perfect host again.

But for that, he'd need backup.

He'd need Sixer.

Bloody Murder Mabel and the Warlock of Roadkill County had been very thorough in arranging their defences. They had the two-headed freak on patrol, they Gideon ready to be unleashed at a moment's notice, dozens of sentry guns watching the entrances, and every single external door and window had been locked, barred and alarmed… all except one.

The attic bedroom still had a broken window, courtesy of Shooting Star falling through it during the initial attack. And because the locks were all controlled from a central hub, the returning defender had simply forgotten all about it. A quick scurry up a nearby tree, a brisk jump from the furthest branch, and little magic to soften his fall, and he was on the rooftop, creeping into the attic.

Inside, the Shack was deathly quiet, every corridor left dark and silent; from the looks of things, Sixer and Shooting Star had done their best to preserve as much of the old décor as possible when they weren't installing isolation cells and operating theatres, so the place looked more a museum than anything else. Even Bill found it a little creepy after a while. But because of the stubborn refusal to change the basic layout, it didn't take much effort to find the old vending machine secret door – and from there, the passage to the underground laboratory. By the time he finally reached the basement, Bill was almost incandescent with excitement, eyes glowing with barely-repressed power as he inched slowly down the hallway and into the lab itself.

Peering through the control room windows, he saw at once that Ford was unaware of his presence, his back to the door and his attention firmly focussed on the construction unfolding in front of him. Around him, the assemblers were rumbling away, welding hastily-purloined steel girders and wiring into the rough shape of the portal, securing magical artefacts around the rim in place of power sources. As Bill crept closer, he also saw that Ford had etched a number of esoteric sigils into the side of the makeshift portal's rim, just so the process could be smoothed along as quickly as possible – resulting in a faster opening with more severe gravity disturbances, a dangerous shortcut.

On the upside, it looked as though Ford had connected most of the same systems he'd used to open the portal…

…including the emergency off-switch, now prepped and ready to use.

Unfortunately, Bill's original body was also visible, having been placed right in front of the nearly-finished portal. Worse still, from what little he could tell from the glimpses he could get of Sixer's brain, the opening process was fully automated: as soon as the construction was complete, the portal would activate in a matter of minutes, and he and his statue would be whisked into oblivion... and if Ford was right in his estimates, it really would be oblivion – a world that would erase his very being for good this time.

He'd have to act quickly, then.

Creeping through the open doorway, Bill reached out to place a hand on the lintel and whispered a few tiny incantations. A moment later, he left the floor and began scuttling silently across the laboratory wall, scaling it to the ceiling until he was almost directly above Ford.

Slowly, he drew his knife. All it would take was for the old man to stray a few feet to the left, and Bill could pounce…

And then, just as he was ready to drop, Ford chuckled. "Took you long enough," he said cheerily. "I didn't think you'd waste this much time, Bill."

Up on the ceiling, Bill stifled a gasp.

"Don't bother pretending you're not there, Cipher. I knew it was only a matter of time before you found a way in. Also, to be frank, you're exactly the most subtle presence in the room, even when you're slumming it in someone else's body: you're giving off so much energy that it's a wonder you aren't giving off sparks. So, what's it to be? Obviously, you're here to kill me and destroy the portal before it can send you howling off to hell… but there's something else you want, am I right?"

Needless to say, Bill was surprised – but you didn't get to become a history-plaguing dream demon without learning to recover quickly. So, he offered his own little burst of mocking laughter as he slowly crept deeper into the shadows.

"You've been a bad monkey, Fordie," he sneered. "You've been keeping secrets from Pine Tree and Shooting Star, haven't ya? All this time, letting them think that Pine Tree was the only one in the family with a little piece of me in his brain… when I've had my claws in you from the moment your idiot brother killed me. Isn't that right?"

"Oh, right enough. Not that it did you much good, as I recall. It must have been frustrating in those early days: I'm imagining you were hoping to have _two_ bodies to work with – me as the main vessel, and Dipper as your understudy."

 _Just a little closer. Just a tiny bit closer…_

"That was the plan at first, yeah. I wouldn't have made you immortal, though: I'd have just made sure you triggered a global war by offering Pine Tree's eternal youth to the masses. Then, once the nukes had started flying, I'd have taken over your dumbass nephew's body and left you to burn alive with everyone else left outside of a bunker. And then-"

"You'd be made a global saviour in the radioactive aftermath, etcetera, etcetera… I can guess the rest. Except your plan went awry all those years ago: you weren't expecting for that plate in my head to disrupt your influence the way it did. It couldn't keep you out entirely, but it wouldn't let you make me into your puppet." Several feet below, Ford smirked, bionic eyes scanning the darkness for any sign of Bill. "Another thing I'll have to thank Jheselbraum for if I ever see her again. Without me, you were forced to claim Dipper as your only vessel… and by then, we'd discovered his illness and put him in isolation. So you had to make do with the dregs of the barrel: Polonius, the dead Northwests, Director Powers, the FIA… ooh, it must have been frustrating as all hell to have to settle for less after everything you did in Weirdmageddon. Am I right?"

Bill seethed, Wendy's borrowed veins luminescing with rage in the shadows of the basement ceiling. "And you must have been going insane!" he shot back. "Knowing you were infected, knowing that you could have ended up just like Pine Tree if it wasn't for that chunk of metal in your skull, and never being able to say a thing about it to your family!"

"Oh, I didn't stay silent forever. I told Stanley, confessed everything to him after years of study and worrying; he was my confidant again by that time, my last true friend with Fiddleford dead. We agreed it would be best to stay silent as long as we were sure that your influence wasn't affecting me. After all, we only believed it was a curse back then, not an actual possession attempt. So, for the sake of Mabel, I stayed silent: she had enough to worry about without adding my troubles to the mix."

 _A little to the left, just until you're right under the point of my knife…_

"For all the good it did you. Once I was strong enough to take control of the Northwests, once I got my little toehold in the FIA, I had the perfect source of intel on what was going on in Gravity Falls. I had _you,_ Sixer, you and every little thought that popped into your tiny, tiny mind!"

"For all the good it's done _you_ so far," said Ford smugly. "You've lost the last of your troops. Your second vessels have all been destroyed. Dipper's free of your influence. We've got your original body… and your current body is falling apart at the seams. I can see the way you're glowing up there: the longer you stay in a body ill-prepared for your presence, the more power you use in trying to keep it patched up, the more you risk catastrophic mutation. An hour more of this, and Wendy's body will just collapse in on itself – and then it'll just be you in here." He tapped the side of Bill's statue form. "Flying off into nothingness the moment the portal opens. Frankly, Bill, you'd be better off just surrendering while you still have your dignity."

Again, Bill could only seethe. "There's one thing you haven't thought of, Sixer," he hissed. "Can you guess what it is?"

"No," said Ford. "But I'm sure you're going to tell me."

And with that, Bill dropped from the ceiling, knife in hand. Landing on top of Ford with a crunch of splintering bones, he drove the blade squarely into his undefended back, grazing the spine, punching through the ribs and puncturing something weak and fleshy – something that Bill knew could only be a lung. Ford only remained upright and vertical by virtue of his robotic legs, but that was all. Bellowing in pain, the wounded scientist swung around violently enough to throw Wendy's borrowed form off his shoulders, and immediately began threshing the air around him with a crowbar – but Bill was ready for the counterattack this time. Darting forward and under the next swing of the crowbar, he stabbed Ford again, this time in the belly; wrenching the knife free, he thrust it higher, up under the ribs and into the organs behind them. Now giggling like mad, he wrenched his blade free one last time, and then buried it up to the hilt in Ford's side.

Cackling, Bill stepped away to admire his handiwork, watching in amusement as his target tried in vain to stem the blood pouring from his many wounds.

"I can't control you while you're living, Sixer," he giggled triumphantly. "But when you get right down to it, that makes you just like the Northwests… and I could control them plenty easy once they dropped dead!"

Ford looked up, his face a mask of anger and pain – and in that moment, Bill lashed out again, tearing his cheek open and nearly popping a bionic eye out of its socket.

"So you just relax, old pal: you're going to be _my_ puppet again in a few minutes. Believe me, I'd have happily ripped out your heart, but the only mechanical ticker just doesn't have the same fun value attached. Still, assuming the punctured lung doesn't kill you, you're gonna bleed out reeeeeally soon! And then, once you're dead and I've made you into my zombie bodyguard, you know what we're going to do? We're going to go upstairs, _kill Shooting Star,_ _ **capture Pine Tree,**_ _ **and make him into my perfect vessel for the second time running!"**_

Ford lunged forward – only for Bill to grab his outstretched arm and stab him squarely in the armpit, rupturing the axillary artery and sending a fresh gout of blood fountaining from him.

"And I couldn't be able to do it without you, Fordsie!" Bill concluded. "Now, any last words? Anything you want me to say to Shooting Star before I kill her? Anything Pine Tree should know _before I vacuum his conscious mind out and sit inside his empty skull?_ Or do you just want to go with the pithy statements? Best advice: say whatever you like, Sixer, 'cuz nobody's gonna bother chiselling it on your tombstone."

Ford coughed, blood oozing from his ancient, battlescarred lips. "I've got something, yeah," he panted wearily, struggling to breathe around the lung wound.

"Okay, let's hear it."

"You… you really are… easily distracted, you know that?"

Bill's heart – or rather _Wendy's_ heart – froze. Looking up at the construction work going on behind Ford, he saw that it was almost finished, and the portal was probably only a couple of minutes from activating. The question was, why would Sixer tell him this _now?_

He was turning around to ask this very question, when one of Ford's mechanical spider legs dealt him a stunning blow to the jaw. Too late, Bill realized that while Ford's body might be critically injured and on the brink of death, his prosthetics weren't. Dazed from the blow, he readied his knife for another attack, only for the right-hand spider leg to kick him squarely in the kneecap. A loud _crunch_ echoed across the lab, and Bill let out a howl of pain – just in time for both legs to attack at once: the blow caught him squarely in the chest, the pneumatic thrust of the limbs sending Bill flying across the basement and right through the control room door, where finally rolled to a halt under one of the desks.

By the time he got to his feet, Ford was already at the door, awkwardly keying instructions into the control panel beside it: long before Bill could reach the entrance, a plexiglass door had slid shut over it, trapping him in the control room.

"Don't think that's gonna stop me for long!" he snarled. "I'll get in there eventually! Better still, you'll open it _for_ me when you bleed out."

"Cute idea," Ford wheezed. "Pity it won't work."

"Why's that?"

Without another word, Ford tapped the tiny metal plating at the centre of his ribcage, finger dancing across a series of hidden controls in his artificial heart. A moment later, a tinny little voice announced, _"self-destruct sequence activated."_

" _What?!"_

"You heard well enough," said Ford with a grin. "In… less than a minute… the micro-explosive in my heart… will have incinerated my corpse. Unless you can… take control of cremated ashes… I'd say you're screwed."

"No! No, no, no, _you're mine!"_

"I _was_ yours. Not anymore. I'm free now!"

"You idiot! You really think I'd believe any of this? You're stalling, buying time until you can see Pine Tree and Shooting Star! I know you, and you wouldn't pass up a chance to say goodbye to your pathetic family!"

"Of course not. And that's why the…. security cameras have been on for a while now. They'll have seen… everything that's happened here… and they'll hear every goodbye I have to say to them."

He smiled again, and turned to the distant shape of the security camera on the far end of the room. "Dipper, Mabel, if you can hear this… this is not your fault. This is just… how it had to end."

"DON'T TURN YOUR BACK ON ME, GODDAMN IT! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME SO I CAN TELL YOU'RE BLUFFING!"

"Put a cork in it, Bill," said Ford wearily. "You'll have plenty of time to scream later."

"SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP! I'LL GET IN! I'LL GET IN AND RIP THE BOMB OUT AND I'LL STOP THE PORTAL ACTIVATION AND I'LL SHOW YOU THE MEANING OF THE WORD RETRIBUTION!"

"You can't take it can you? The idea of being defeated by a human being. It just… drives you madder than ever… that something so lowly could best you at _anything._ All those temper tantrums. All those… tedious screaming fits. You couldn't imagine having your best bet at winning snatched away and burnt to ashes…" Ford chuckled weakly. "Just like you couldn't imagine my brother punching you out of existence. Huh. Stan…"

Stanford Pines hesitated, as if considering something. Then, he very slowly fell forward, prosthetic legs deactivating as he gently slumped to the ground.

"Ford?" Bill hollered. " _Ford?_ FORD?! GET UP! YOU'RE NOT FOOLING ME, FORD! I'M SMARTER THAN YOU! I'M SMARTER, STRONGER, AND BETTER THAN EVERYONE ON THIS RAT'S NEST OF A PLANET! I'VE DESTROYED ENTIRE CIVILIZATIONS! I'VE SEEN WHOLE WORLDS SNUFFED OUT! I'VE MADE PLANS THAT HAVE OUTLASTED DYNASTIES! I'M BILL CIPHER, RULER OF THE NIGHTMARE REALM, MASTER OF WEIRDNESS, FUTURE EMPEROR OF EARTH! YOU CAN'T DEFEAT ME JUST BY… just by… dying…"

Bill slowly trailed off, as he noticed the plumes of smoke rising from the corpse.

A moment later, Ford's body was ablaze, body instantly consumed by the tiny self-destruct mechanism, a single intense burst of heat searing the flesh from the bones and then disintegrating the bones. And in less than ten seconds, Stanford Filbrick Pines, once known as the Warlock of Roadkill County, was gone.

And in the silence that followed, a computerized voice intoned, " _Construction complete. Portal activation will commence in t-minus five minutes."_

Bill _roared,_ hammering the plexiglass door with all his might, breaking every single bone in Wendy's fists – until at last, he found himself using the only advantage he had left in his reserves. Pouring his energies across him, he felt his wounds seal shut as his flesh tuned molten, limbs dividing into tentacles, eyes bursting and hollowing into the chasms of new mouths, and eyeballs erupting from the gnashing jaws of old mouths, and at last, Wendy's body vanished in the tidal wave of mutation…

…and something new began to slowly shatter the plexiglass.

* * *

In the end, Dipper had no time to celebrate the moment when Bill's mark had finally been erased from his body and brain. It was just a simple injection, really: Dipper didn't feel any better or worse for having the curse lifted at long last… and besides, it wasn't long before he and Mabel found their attention taken up by more important things.

Staring into the security monitor, the two watched in horror as Bill in Wendy's body dropped from above and brutally stabbed Grunkle Ford, over and over again. Then, after barely managing to fight him off, Ford had slumped to the ground and vanished in flames, his body instantly reduced to a blackened smudge on the laboratory floor even as Bill howled in rage.

For a moment, Dipper could only stare in disbelief. "He's dead," he whispered, utterly shellshocked. "Grunkle Ford's… he can't be – he'd have thought of something – he wouldn't just… no, no, no, he can't actually be dead…"

He was crying, he realized, tears streaming down his face in trails as hot as molten metal. He thought he'd cried like a baby back when he'd found himself in this madhouse of a future in the first place, but this was even worse: right now, he barely had any family and friends left on the planet and Bill was taking what little he had left away as well. And as he stared into the monitor, he found himself gripped by a terrible vision of his life after this final battle: even if he somehow survived this, Mabel would probably end up dead as well, and unless they returned to stasis, Blubs and Durland would die soon as well. And for all he knew, Gideon would probably stop coming back to life sooner or later.

He'd be alone in the ruins of Gravity Falls, cut off from all contact with the human race and with nobody to keep him company except for brutal swarms of gnomes. And if he was really unlucky, the biological side-effects of Bill's curse would linger, and he'd get to carry on for all eternity.

And then, just as he was starting to wonder how the situation could possibly get worse, the empty syringe on the table beside them suddenly floated about an inch into the air – before abruptly clattering back to the table. And from all around them, there came the crash and tinkle of other small objects doing much the same thing.

"Gravity distortions," Mabel hissed. "The portal's opening. Come on, Dipper we have to go!"

Dipper looked up in disbelief at his sister, trying to work out how she could have shrugged off the death of Grunkle Ford so quickly; her face was still wet with tears, but now her eyes were alight with determination once again. How could she have learned to do this, to switch off her grief at the drop of a hat? Was it just something that happened after so many deaths and tragedies in her life, or was it something she had to learn how to do over the decades?

In any case, he didn't have time to ask any of these questions for himself: Mabel simply scooped him up, tucked him under one arm and barrelled down the hallway at a breakneck speed, bellowing at Blubs and Durland to follow her. Descending towards the basement lab with the Sherriff and the Deputy in hot pursuit, they arrived just in time for an earsplitting howl of anger echo up the staircase.

"GODDAMMIT, GODDAMMIT, _GODDAMMIT!_ WHY IS THIS THING NOT RESPONDING?!"

The first thing they saw was that the control room had almost been torn apart, every window and door smashed open in a desperate attempt to allow the thing now occupying the laboratory inside.

The second was that Bill had arrived on the scene in a way that only he could have possibly imagined.

The thing now looming over the jerry-rigged portal was only vaguely recognizable as Wendy Corduroy, in the sense that there were still a few vague shanks of red hair clinging to the back of its gargantuan skull. The rest of her was all inhuman, and all of somehow suited Bill's consciousness down to the ground: it looked like nothing more than a vast, writhing bundle of mottled grey tentacles, either wildly lashing the air or draped over every surface of the lap… and even from here, amidst the chaos and confusion of machinery and meat, it was clear that each one led back to a single bloodshot eyeball with one unblinking golden pupil.

And at present, it appeared to be trying to dismantle the portal.

For twelve heartstopping seconds, Dipper, Mabel, Blubs and Durland stared up at the monster, and Bill's new form stared down at them with hatred in his single golden eye.

"YOU," he snarled.

Then, as one, all of them charged.

At first, it was an almost _orderly_ sort of attack: Mabel drew a knife from her belt and began hacking her way through the tentacles, Blubs and Durland bombarded the central eye with devastating blasts from their rifles, Dipper scurried around on the ground for some kind of weapon that could work at range, and Bill did his best to fight them off and shut down the portal at the same time.

Then the next gravity distortion hit, and everything went mad: suddenly, everyone was tumbling aimlessly through the air and struggling to continue whatever it was they'd been doing – and hopefully avoid rising too high before the distortion came to an end.

Bill was the first to recover once gravity returned to normal: with Blubs and Durland left sprawled on the ground like an overturned tortoise, he reached down with once colossal bouquet of tentacles, seized the two of them by the waist and bowled them through the control room door and out of the lab entirely. For good measure, another cluster of tentacles wrenched one of the idling assemblers off the ground and flung it at the lab entrance, neatly blocking the door with a huge pile of shattered machinery. Assuming Blubs and Durland were still alive, they wouldn't be able to blast their way through the rubble before it was too late.

Dipper briefly wondered why Bill hadn't just killed the two – torn their heads off or squeezed them until they burst, or something equally as brutal. But then the answer hit him like a punch in the guts: he couldn't afford to waste time on killing people. He had only minutes before the portal opened. All that mattered was getting the attackers out of the way so he could have the time and space needed to shut down the machinery. Once he was done, he could take all the time he needed to kill them all.

Once again, gravity switched off, this time much more violently: Dipper, who was struggling to unblock the door, found himself abruptly whisked off the floor and slammed chinfirst into the low ceiling. Mabel wasn't so lucky: she was out in the main laboratory, and when gravity went wild, she found herself ripped from the ground and flung towards the ceiling at high speed; only Bill's presence there kept her from breaking bones, and though his horrendous flesh body provided a relatively soft landing, it left her squarely in his crosshairs.

For twenty heartstopping seconds, Mabel and Bill duelled atop the ceiling, the former shredding her way through one tentacle after another and stabbing furiously down into the undefended eyeball, the latter struggling to get a grip on the tiny target crawling up and down across its pupil. But then gravity returned to normal, and as the two fell, Bill _lunged._

Seven tentacles wrapped themselves around Mabel's waist, and one more formed a noose around her throat. Then they landed with a crash, and Bill began the process of trying to strangle her to death and deactivate the portal at the same time. Eventually, he found the off switch again, somehow undamaged despite the carnage of the lab…

…only to find that he couldn't press it.

With each of his tentacles almost a foot across, he just didn't have the dexterity to hit the switch.

Once again, Bill was briefly beside himself with rage, howling mad, incoherent words at the ceiling as he fumbled pathetically at the button.

Then, he shouted, "PINE TREE! GET OUT HERE _NOW_ OR I KILL YOUR SISTER."

Without hesitating, Dipper picked himself off the floor and staggered into the laboratory, even as Mabel – voice muffled by the tentacles smothering her face – screamed at him to remain hidden.

"YOU KNOW HOW TO SHUT THIS PORTAL OFF: PRESS THE SWITCH AND I'LL LET SHOOTING STAR LIVE."

Heart hammering, Dipper found himself silently crossing the lab towards the tiny stand on which the emergency off button still sat, right in front of the swirling vortex beginning to form at the heart of the improvised portal. In that moment, he wasn't thinking about what might happen next; right then and there, his mind was blank except for one single thought, repeated over and over again like a mantra: _I can't lose anyone else, I can't lose anyone else, I can't lose anyone else, I can't lose anyone else…_

"HURRY UP! WE HAVEN'T GOT ALL DAY!"

At last, he stopped in front of the button, gripped the stand just in case gravity went wild again, raised his hand to deactivate the portal…

Somewhere overhead, the soothing voice of the laboratory computer informed them that there was exactly one minute and thirty seconds left until the portal finally opened.

And in that very instant, Dipper lowered his hand.

"What's my motivation?" he asked quietly.

"WHAT?"

"You heard me. What's in it for me? Why should I shut down this portal?"

"BECAUSE IF YOU DON'T, I'LL KILL YOUR SISTER. HOW'S THAT SOUND, SMARTASS?"

"Funny thing, Bill. This isn't like back in the Fearamind, all those years ago: I don't have the promise that you'll let Mabel go if I toe the line, not really. See, Ford knew we wouldn't be a threat to you anymore once you handed over the equation… but here? You're stuck in a meat body and you're falling apart. I mean, those tentacles aren't normal, ae they? Here, Mabel won't stop trying to kill you as long as I'm still alive and in danger… so if you ever want to try to claim me as a host or whatever, you're going to _have_ to kill her. So I don't really have a reason to press this button, do I?"

Somewhere under Bill's tentacles, Mabel began to laugh.

" _Forty seconds and counting._

"NO," Bill thundered – but now there was a note of fear in his voice. "YOU LISTEN TO ME. I'VE GOT LOTS MORE TO MOTIVATE YOU WITH."

"Oh really? Do tell."

"I CAN GIVE YOU-"

Now it was Dipper's turn to laugh. "You're planning on using my body as a fingerpuppet, Bill! You're not gonna give me _anything!_ And even if you were… what do you have left? You've lost your old power, you've lost the FIA, you've lost the Northwests, you've lost your big collection of magical artefacts, and you're losing your body. Soon, you'll have nothing… just like me."

" _Thirty seconds and counting."_

"YOU HAVE IMMORTALITY, REMEMBER? _I GAVE YOU THAT!_ "

"Oh yeah, I remember. And I also remember that you took my entire life away from me as payment. Forty years of my life, almost my entire family, all my friends… and now you think you can bargain your way out of this?" Dipper's eyes narrowed in hatred. "You think you can just make a deal, have me shake your hand and make everything perfect for you? Or do you think I owe you something for making me immortal? You think I owe you anything for making my life a living hell?"

Bill's tentacles writhed in blind panic.

" _Ten."_

The monster looked frantically from Dipper to Mabel and back again as he struggled to think of what to do next.

"What's wrong, Bill? Nothing clever left to say?

"LISTEN TO ME, GODDAMMIT! I WANT-"

" _Five."_

"Seems to me there's only one thing you really want, Bill, and that's me."

" _Zero. Opening portal…"_

"So come and get me," said Dipper, and without another word, let go of the stand.

Up he floated, alongside the petrified remains of Bill's original body, alongside Mabel, alongside Bill himself, all of them slowly dragged inexorably towards the open portal.

With a strangled howl, Bill made a grab for several things at once: Dipper, his statue, a grip that might slow his progress towards the portal, but all in vain – his clumsy new body simply didn't have the coordination to grasp so many things at once. In the end, he could only flail helplessly, screaming his last desperate expletives as all three of them tumbled head over heels…

…right into the portal.

* * *

Blinding light poured in on them from all angles, searing in its intensity, somehow visible even through Dipper's closed eyes.

Several seconds went by, and the light refused to fade… but as his eyes somehow adjusted to the dazzling brilliance of the realm around him, Dipper couldn't help noticing the figures alongside him, tumbling through the light. One of them was Mabel.

The other was Bill…

And Bill's gargantuan form was now surrounded on all sides by slowly-contracting sphere of electric-blue flame, a dozen rings of fire closing in on him from all sides. And judging from the terrified look in his eye, Bill knew all too well what would happen when the fire made contact.

"NO! NO, NO, NO, IT CAN'T END LIKE THIS! I… WAIT, I MADE A MISTAKE! PLEASE, JUST GIVE ME ONE MORE CHANCE! I GET ONE MORE CHANCE, ISN'T THAT RIGHT? I INVOKE THE ANCIENT POWER THAT I MAY RETURN! AXOLOTL, CAN YOU HEAR ME? I BEESEECH YOU – GIVE ME ONE MORE CHANCE!"

And from somewhere above them, a voice intoned, **YOU HAD YOUR CHANCE ALREADY, BILL. YOU SQUANDERED IT.**

"WHAT?"

 **THE BARGAIN HAS BEEN MADE ACROSS THE MULTIVERSE OVER AND OVER AGAIN, AND WILL BE MADE FOR AS LONG AS YOUR ALTERNATES STILL EXIST. OTHER BILLS HAVE INVOKED MY NAME AND BEEN GIVEN A SECOND CHANCE.**

"THEN WHAT MAKES ME SO DIFFERENT?!"

 **YOU CHOSE TO STEAL THE LIFE OF ANOTHER INSTEAD OF SUBMITTING TO MY TERMS… AND SO YOU HAVE FORFEITED YOUR CHANCE FOR ANOTHER LIFE IN A NEW FORM AND A NEW TIME. YOU HAVE COMMITTED CRIMES BEYOND FORGIVENESS. YOU HAVE WROUGHT WAR, DEATH, AND SUFFERING BEYOND MEASURE, RUINED AN ENTIRE EARTH FOR YOUR OWN SELFISH DESIGNS. YOU HAVE PROVED YOURSELF BEYOND REDEMPTION… AND SO, TOTAL DISSOLUTION IS YOUR ONLY REWARD** **.**

"NO! PLEASE-"

 **GOODBYE, BILL.**

"AXOLOTL! LISTEN TO ME! LISTEN! I DID RIGHT BY PINE TREE! I GAVE HIM IMMORTALITY! I DESERVE A SECODN CHANCE FOR THAT! TELL HIM, DIPPER! TELL HIM! TELL HIM! PLEASE! _PLEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-"_

For a moment, Bill's form was visible, writhing deep within the flames as they raced across his agony-stricken body. Then, in a magnesium-flare flash of light, he was gone.

A moment later, his statue cracked, crumbled, and finally disintegrated into ashes that slowly dispersed themselves across the emptiness.

In the end, all that was left of Bill Cipher were memories.

For almost a minute afterwards, there was silence. Then, there was a rumble from overhead.

 **DIPPER AND MABEL PINES,** intoned the gigantic voice. **THE TWO OF YOU STAND UPON THE THRESHOLD OF INFINITY, AND HAVE SET RIGHT A GREAT INJUSTICE. TO SAY THAT YOU ARE OWED REWARDS FOR YOUR ACTIONS WOULD BE DOING A DISSERVICE TO THE WORD: ALL THE DECADES OF SUFFERING YOU HAVE ENDURED HAVE WON YOU RECOMPENSE THAT FEW MORTALS CAN HOPE TO ACHIEVE. WHAT DO YOU WISH OF ME?**

Dipper blinked. "I can… ask for anything?"

" **IF YOU WISH, YOU CAN BE RETURNED HOME AND BE ALLOWED TO REBUILD. IF YOU WISH, YOU CAN EXPLORE THE COSMOS AS BROTHER AND SISTER. IF YOU WISH, I CAN MAKE MABEL IMMORTAL TOO, SO THAT YOU WILL NEVER BE ALONE. IF YOU WISH, I CAN UNDO YOUR IMMORTALTY. IF IT IS WITHIN MY POWER, I WILL GRANT YOUR DESIRE. YOU ARE OWED THAT MUCH AND MORE."**

Dipper looked from the blinding light above him to Mabel, and a moment of silent understanding passed between them. There was only one thing they could possibly ask for.

"We want our lives back," said Dipper. "We want everything Bill took from us."

"And a really nice party for our thirteenth birthdays would be good as well," Mabel chimed in.

 **VERY WELL. IF THAT IS WHAT YOU WANT, I CAN GRANT YOU A RETURN TO THE LIFE YOU YEARN FOR, IN A DIFFERENT WORLD AND A DIFFERENT TIME. NOW CLOSE YOUR EYES… AND DREAM OF A WORLD WHERE THE FUTURE YOU WITNESSED WAS BUT A FABLE AND BILL CIPHER'S MARK IS A CAUTIONARY TALE…"**

* * *

Dipper's eyes snapped open.

For a moment, he had no idea where he was; the ceiling seemed totally unfamiliar after the last few nights he'd spent waking up in operating theatres and bunkers. But then he noticed the smell of dust, old furniture and goat, and realized with a thrill of excitement that this could only be the attic of the Mystery Shack.

Sitting up in bed, he found himself staring out into his old bedroom, exactly as it had been. Everything was as it was on the night when the Mystery Shack had been restored to normal; even the stitching around his head and the many cuts and bruises he'd acquired along the way were gone. It was as if the last few nights of madness had simply never happened.

And lying in bed on the other side of the room was-

" _Mabel!"_

" _Dipper!"_

He didn't even see his sister move; nor he was aware of having budged from his seat. One minute he was sitting up in bed, the next he was standing in the middle of the attic, locked in one of Mabel's trademarked hugs.

For a moment, they could only stand there, shivering slightly in each other's arms.

Then, Mabel whispered, "You saw what I saw, right? Gravity Falls invaded, me getting really old, Grunkle Ford going all cyborg-"

"-the Northwests coming back as zombies, Gravity Falls invaded, Sherriff Blubs and Deputy Durland as a super soldier – yeah, I remember all that. But… was it real? Or did we just dream it?"

"…I think it was real. I mean, even my dreams don't stay this clear after I've woken up."

"It feels like a nightmare – the kind you can shrug off without forgetting. But maybe that's what we get for wishing for our old lives back: we don't have to be troubled by what happened in the old future anymore. We can just… be happy in the present."

"Words to live by, bro-bro."

"So, Axolotl gave us a fresh start as different versions of ourselves in another dimension."

"Certainly looks like it. But if that's the case, then…" Her eyes widened. "Omigosh," she whispered, pointing at the calendar on the wall. "It's our birthday party today! He really did make all our wishes come true!"

For a moment, there was silence.

"So what do we do now?" Dipper asked quietly. "What are we supposed to do now that we've gotten everything we wanted?"

"Easy! We _party!"_

"Pardon?"

"We've got a party to attend… and I think after all this time, I owe a lot of people some _serious_ hugs!"

"On one condition."

"What's that?"

"That the first hugs go straight to Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford."

"Agreed. Now come on, Dipper! We've got a life to live to the fullest!"

Laughing, Dipper followed her out of the attic and rumbled down the stairs; he didn't know what awaited him in this lifetime - if he was still immortal or if he was just as mortal as anyone else, if he was due to achieve in life or be content with lesser things, or even if he'd one day return to Gravity Falls to say - he just didn't know.

And for once, the uncertainty didn't frighten him.

Bill Cipher was gone.

His curse was gone.

But most importantly of all, no matter how far he travelled or whatever he might experience, Dipper would never have to endure that special kind of isolation ever again.

 **THE END**

* * *

A/N: Up next, a new story - something much happier than ever before! Yes, really. Feel free to imagine how that might go, and share all your theories as to what it might be about.


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